


On the Hunt

by Nemi_Almasy



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Alternate Universe, Enemies With Benefits, Enemies to Lovers, Explicit Sexual Content, Fluff, M/M, Mama Shinra lives, Porn With Plot, Porn with Feelings, Smut
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-17
Updated: 2020-11-04
Packaged: 2021-03-03 21:00:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 12
Words: 50,361
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24772045
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nemi_Almasy/pseuds/Nemi_Almasy
Summary: When word comes down from President Shinra for the Turks to assassinate his wife, Veld helps Margaret Shinra and her young son Rufus escape Midgar to avoid her fate. Twenty-three years later, the new leader of the Turks, Tseng, is sent on a mission to deal with Margaret and bring Rufus back to Midgar - only to quickly learn that Rufus Shinra should not be taken lightly.
Relationships: Rufus Shinra/Tseng
Comments: 67
Kudos: 165





	1. Runaways

There was little to be said about the climate of the jungle surrounding Mideel except that it was both hot and oppressively humid, as harsh and unwelcoming as the deserts of the western continent, with a density to the air the left your clothes soaked through with sweat at the slightest movement. Rufus Shinra had handled his fair share of inhospitable climates over the last three decades, and he would have taken the sweltering heat of the jungle over frigid northern climes any day, but it didn’t mean he had taken a liking to it either.

Any outing through the jungle that was going to be remotely successful required a number of necessary effects: a utilitarian and breathable outfit, a canteen of water, a filter straw - for when the canteen water ran out, a weapon, and some materia -or a machete in a pinch, which could serve two purposes at once - to selectively carve a path through the dense overgrowth. A map was optional, but helpful, though so much of the dense forest was uncharted that Rufus had taken to marking his own maps denoting places where fresh water ran and animals made their nests.

His objective that morning was only to hunt for some food for the group, and while he usually took a hunting party along, all he wanted that morning was a bit of quiet solitude while he worked out his pent up energy with his hunting rifle. Just ahead of him, Dark Nation trotted with her nose to the ground sniffing out the cripshay den Rufus knew was somewhere in the near vicinity.

D was all muscle, rippling beneath leathery skin. She wasn’t bred as a hunting dog, but Rufus had put the time and effort into training her - she already had the bite grip and brute strength necessary for the task. His mother had smuggled her out of a Shinra science facility with a few of her litter mates four years earlier and their connection had been instant. Whimpering beneath the pile of her larger, stronger siblings, Rufus had picked her up by the scruff and known right away she would be his companion for the rest of her life.

She had proved her loyalty time and time again, her body marred with scars sustained protecting him in the heat of a fight.

She came to a halt near a tangle of overgrown tree roots and clawed at the wood.

“Heel,” Rufus commanded. She moved to his side and waited.

The trick to burning a path through the jungle was to have fire and ice materia at the ready: hit the roots with fire, let it burn enough of an opening to fit through, and quell the fires with ice to keep the entire jungle from burning down. It was a good method when the objective was getting from point A to point B, but the explosion of a fire spell was also a great way to scare off any prey, so Rufus had taken to keeping a machete with him on hunting trips for just such a purpose. It was harder work hacking at the roots, but it would keep the cripshays he was hunting from running.

Rufus didn’t mind hard labor. He was good at it and he enjoyed anything that got his muscles moving and his blood pumping. He was always the first to volunteer for hunting trips, and happy to work alongside subordinates in menial tasks like chopping firewood and mending the exterior of the little bungalows where he and the rest of their cell of AVALANCHE made their homes (at least for the moment).

There was a definite hierarchy to the group, but everyone was expected to carry their weight - Rufus was no exception.

It felt good to work the muscles in his back and shoulders as he hacked away at the roots. Once he had cleared a suitable path, D moved on ahead to follow the scent she had picked up and Rufus hung back, pulling his rifle from his back and readying it. They were close - he could tell by the way the tentacle on D’s head twitched in anticipation of a kill.

Hunting alone with D was a different dance than when they were in a group. He could always anticipate her movements and between the two of them they could bring in almost as much fresh meat as an entire hunting party. D came to a halt in front of dense thicket of brush and looked to Rufus for direction.

“Around,” he whispered. She moved to the other side of the thicket. “Now.”

Despite her enormous size, she managed to fit her body beneath the brush into the nest, growling and snarling to chase the cripshays out, which they did all too readily, rushing from the safety of their nest directly into Rufus’ line of sight. He let off a round, reloaded, let off another - a volley of gunshots cracking in the quiet morning air as each bullet met its target. Any cripshay that didn’t meet its end at Rufus’ hand found its neck between D’s jaws, her powerful grip easily snapping bone and tendons.

When all was said and done, they rounded up seven dead cripshays to bring home for meat. Rufus had bags for the bodies, one which fit in a harness on D’s back and another which he carried over his shoulder. Together, they returned to camp laden down with their new burden.

Rufus knew Wedge would take care of butchering the meat and he was grateful for it. He didn’t mind helping out with skinning and deboning when he had to, but he didn’t take any pleasure in the task - if his lifestyle had allowed it, he probably wouldn’t have eaten meat at all. As riveting as hunting could be, thinking about the actual process of pulling muscle from bone never sat well with him.

The most recent iteration of AVALANCHE headquarters was a circle of simple, but sturdily constructed bungalows around a central fire pit where the group held meetings, ate meals, and occasionally allowed themselves the luxury of a party. The nature of their work necessitated constant movement, and they had been living in this jungle for two years now. Rufus knew they were fast approaching the time to pack up and move again. As long as it wasn’t on the Northern continent, he didn’t mind bidding farewell to this particular rustic lifestyle.

They had lived more places than Rufus could really remember in the years since his mother had fled Midgar with him when he was only a child. Sometimes, they had made their base within towns that allowed for all the modern luxuries they could ask for - electricity, running water, modern plumbing. Other times, like now, they were forced to live in the wilds, where it was less likely for Shinra to find them. He didn’t mind either way, but it was nice to consider the potential comfort of a house with a proper mattress and - Gods willing - air conditioning wherever they ended up next.

It was early enough when Rufus and D returned to camp, that most everyone was still asleep. At the central fire, a portly figure in a chef’s apron was alternating between stoking the fire and chopping vegetables against a table set up on the other side of the log benches encircling the fire.

“Hey bro,” Wedge greeted Rufus in his familiar raspy tone. He eyed the large sacks Rufus and D carried. “Bring back anything good?”

Rufus had long since given up on getting Wedge to address him by as anything other than ‘bro’. It was his endearment for everyone, but Rufus privately hated it. He pulled the sack from D’s back and set both down, pulling the dead cripshays out and lining them up in a row next to the table.

“Seven total,” he said.

Wedge rubbed his hands together. “All right! This is great! I’ll get to work on them after I finish breakfast.”

“No rush,” said Rufus. “They aren’t getting any deader.”

He stepped away before Wedge could engage him in further conversation. He didn’t mind Wedge, but he was overly chatty and Rufus had enjoyed his thus far solitary morning. He didn’t want his ear talked off and he especially didn’t care to have an hour long conversation about food.

“Oh uh…see ya!” Wedge called when he realized Rufus had already left.

Rufus waved a hand and moved along the dirt path to the largest bungalow at the northern end of the camp, D following obediently at his heels. He nudged the door open quietly and slipped inside, shutting it behind him and waiting for a moment on the other side of the threshold for his eyes to adjust to the darkness within.

His mother’s bungalow also doubled as the central meeting area for the top leaders of AVALANCHE. Being constantly on the move meant that there wasn’t much in the way of physical possessions decorating the room, but an expensive rug gifted to them by a friend still working within Shinra adorned the floor of the sitting room, and handmade pillows stuffed with chocobo feathers had been placed in a circle around a low-lying coffee table. It was here where the leaders held their meetings over a pot of tea or - if they could get their hands on it - a bottle of sake.

“Out early again this morning I see.” His mother’s familiar voice sounded from the room just off the sitting area.

“I took D for a hunt,” Rufus answered.

He crossed the room to a long table against the wall and filled the tea kettle with water from a plain ceramic basin, lighting a little aluminum heating candle beneath the kettle stand and letting it heat the water to a boil. While he waited, he took a seat on one of the pillows and scratched behind D’s ear as she curled up at his side.

“Why don’t you put a pot of tea on?” His mother suggested, still busy getting ready inside her room.

“I already have the kettle on.”

“Such a thoughtful boy.”

Rufus chuckled. “It couldn’t be that you ask me to put it on every morning.”

His mother finally stepped out of her room, clad in her typically sensible style of a loose-fitting tunic and khakis, her greying blonde hair pulled into a loose bun at the base of her skull. She smiled at him in greeting and pulled the kettle off the flame as it began to whistle, carrying it over to the table and pouring it into the teapot, readied with loose leaf tea in the strainer at the top. D’s much larger litter mate, Stella, followed at her heels, breaking away to greet her sibling with a push of her snout against D’s.

This was their morning ritual and had been for more than two decades. No matter what else was happening or where they were on the planet, they would always take twenty or thirty minutes every morning to have a cup of tea together. Sometimes they would chat about their plans, or what they had been up to the day before, other times they would sit in a comfortable silence, but they always made time for this.

“So?” Rufus’ mother asked as she poured them each a cup of tea. “How was the hunt?”

“Successful,” Rufus answered. “We caught seven cripshays. Wedge is going to butcher them after he finishes breakfast.”

“That’s good meat. It’ll go to good use. Been a while since we’ve had so much at once.” She sipped her tea and observed Rufus quietly for a moment.

“What?” he demanded.

She shook her head. “Sometimes you look so much like him.”

Rufus didn’t care to think about it. He barely remembered his father and all he knew of him in the decades since he and his mother left Midgar were the extensions of his military that pursued them relentlessly across every continent. _He_ was the reason AVALANCHE could never rest in one place too long. Was twenty-three years not enough time to give up the ghost? What Rufus knew definitively about President Shinra was that he would stop at nothing until he and his mother were dead or in chains.

“You know I hate to be reminded of it.”

“I’m sorry,” she said quickly. “It takes me by surprise some days.”

“We need to have a conversation about where to go next.” Rufus changed the subject. “It’s only a matter of time before Shinra roots out our location and we haven’t seriously sat down with the others to discuss the move.”

“Well,” his mother shrugged. “We have time. Barret isn’t eager to leave either, now that Marlene is a little older and-.”

“I don’t give a shit what Barret wants,” Rufus huffed. “All I care about is that we keep breathing. We won’t be able to do that if Shinra swoops in and bombs this camp.”

His mother had raised him to be cautious, perhaps to a degree some might call paranoia. But he wasn’t being paranoid, not really. Twice in the last six years Shinra _had_ found their location and it had been a near miss for them to escape. They had lost good people the last time, gunned down by a unit of infantrymen and two Shinra helicopters.

He knew his mother’s concern was that focusing so much of their time on eluding Shinra prevented them from taking any action _against_ Shinra. They could have done great work operating out of the slums in Midgar, but there was nowhere more dangerous for them to be - so they traveled the globe and doled out work to their cells across the globe. Rufus wanted to get his hands dirty with the others, but it always had to wait. .

“I hear your concerns, Rufus,” his mother said. “But you don’t get the sole decision on this matter.”

“Oh, I’m acutely aware.” He sipped his tea irritably.

“Don’t pout,” she chided. “You aren’t a child.”

Rufus turned his nose up. “I’m _not_ pouting.”

“We’ll have a meeting around the fire tonight and I’ll broach the subject. That’s all I can promise for now.”

It was at least a start, so he let it lie. He would be more adamant about his opinion on the matter when it came up at the group discussion. He already knew it would turn into a heated argument with Barret Wallace - one he was likely to lose given that both of them would side toward staying put for the time being. Still worth an argument; he could be convincing when he wanted to.

* * *

Margaret Shinra looked out on the city of Midgar from Shinra Tower for the final time. In ten minutes, Veld would be along to sneak them out of the building before his men came looking for them. Her husband had charged Veld with the task of ‘dealing’ with his insubordinate wife and it was because of the inappropriate relationship Margaret had struck up with the leader of the Turks that her life was being spared.

Her biggest crime was her infidelity, which she thought was pretty rich considering her husband had stuck his dick in every secretary that waltzed through his office door - a fact she had been naive about for the first few years of their marriage, then chosen to ignore for the rest of it. They hadn’t slept together in months anyway, and it only happened because there was a sense of obligation to keep him placated on the rare night that he preferred her company to a mistress’.

Was it so terrible for her to turn to another for comfort? She was the fool for allowing it to happen with Veld, but who better than a Turk to be discreet about an illicit affair? She was certain it was Heidegger who had uncovered it, one way or another. His nose was so far up her husband’s ass she was surprised he could smell anything but shit.

She hadn’t loved her husband for a very long time. She was a trophy for him to show off and he was a source of income for her, at least at first. Nearly a decade living at Shinra Tower had taught her more than she ever wanted to know about the seedy underbelly of the company - things she shouldn’t have known but had investigated anyway, sticking her nose where she knew it didn’t belong. Veld filled in the gaps. That was her second-biggest offense: she knew too much for a simple divorce. If the marriage was ever going to be dissolved, she had to die.

But she would never abide letting her husband raise their son. Rufus was the only good thing to have come from their miserable, loveless marriage and even if Margaret hadn’t been willing to fight tooth and nail to keep herself alive, she would do it to keep Rufus out of her piece of shit power-hungry husband’s influence. Her husband didn’t love or even like their son. Rufus would suffer without her in his life.

Margaret stared out the window at the twinkling lights of the city with a growing sense of sadness. She had spent her entire life in that city - it was her _home_ \- and now it was the most dangerous place in the world for her. Rufus stood at her side fidgeting with a toy plane Veld had given him. He knew something was amiss, but he didn’t fully understand why they were fleeing - she would explain it to him once they were safe.

There was a knock at the door and she jumped.

“Peggy?” It was Veld. He stepped inside and shut the door quietly behind him. “It’s time.”

“I wish you could come with us,” she said, turning and meeting him halfway in the center of the room, wrapping her arms around him in a warm embrace. He kissed her forehead and looked past her to where Rufus stood next to the few belongings they had gathered to take with them. Veld had warned them to pack lightly.

He sighed. “I would love nothing more. But it’s better for me to stay and have a handle on things. I can keep you safer running the Turks.”

Privately, Margaret worried that once she was gone, her husband would have Veld killed for their affair. His punishment thus far was the burden of murdering his lover at the President’s request. Veld’s saving grace was that he was too useful to the company to get rid of - Margaret, unfortunately, was not.

She wouldn’t question Veld’s abilities - she knew him too well to think of doing so - but she also worried that her husband would easily figure out it was Veld who helped them escape. He knew how to cover his tracks and she was certain he would come up with a good enough alibi to clear himself when the dust had settled, but her heart ached to consider for even a moment that the man she loved might die because of her.

“Rufus, darling, come on.” Margaret grabbed their bags and clasped Rufus’ hand in hers.

“Mother, where are we going?” he asked.

“We’re going away.” She bent down in front of him and smoothed some his hair from his face. He pouted at her, his little eyebrows knitting in distress. “Are you frightened?”

“No!” He said defiantly, but there were tears welling in his eyes.

“Oh, darling.” She looked to Veld, who took her bags from her so she could lift Rufus up in her arms. At nearly seven, he was verging on too big to hold like that, and her husband would have chided her for coddling him, but she couldn’t blame him for being scared. She was scared too. “It’s okay. Mommy will be with you the whole time, okay?”

Rufus held her neck and buried his face against her shoulder.

“We don’t have much time,” Veld urged. “I have a car waiting downstairs. Get rid of it as soon as possible. I’ll be giving the vehicle identification numbers to Heidegger once you have a head start.”

Margaret steeled herself and followed Veld out the door to the elevator. She wouldn’t miss Shinra Tower. For all her wealth and fame, the place felt like a prison most days - and it was in some ways. Her husband had eyes on her more often than not. Inside the safety of the elevator, Veld pressed his lips to hers in a short, but emotional kiss. She nudged her nose against his.

“I love you,” she said, eyes welling with tears.

“And I you. I’m sorry,” he turned his gaze away in shame. “I feel this is my fault.”

“No. No, we’re both to blame aren’t we? We never should have…” She let herself trail off. What she had started with Veld had been purely physical at first, but it had become emotional far more quickly than she bargained for.

“Even knowing this end I can’t help but feel it was worth it,” said Veld.

Margaret nodded in agreement and cupped her hand against the back of Rufus’ head. He was crying silently against her shoulder now and she stroked his hair and cooed softly against his ear.

“It’s okay, my little chocobo. I’m here. Cry if you need to. Mommy’s here.”

“He’ll be okay.” Veld’s voice caught in his throat as he spoke. He had always been partial to Rufus, even before their affair, because he had lost his own child some years earlier. He reached a hand out to ruffle Rufus’ hair. “You’ll both be okay.”

The elevator doors slid open and Veld ushered them out, placing a hand on the small of Margaret’s back as he led them along a row of cars to one with the keys already in the ignition. He loaded their bags into the trunk while Margaret settled Rufus into the back seat and buckled him in.

She and Veld stood before each other by the side of the car, hands clasped together and he kissed her one last time.

“Peggy,” he breathed. He was the only one who ever called her that - the only one she would allow to call her that. “I love you. Please be safe.”

“If you can ever contact me, if…” She swallowed hard and blinked tears from her eyes. She would likely never see him again - for both of their safety. “No. I won’t hold out that hope. I love you, Veld. Thank you for this.”

She climbed into the car and started the engine, pulling out slowly to avoid arousing suspicion and driving away, watching Veld grow smaller in her rear view mirror. Out onto the highway they drove onward, past the barrier wall into the eastern wastes. It was here that she picked up speed, putting as much distance between herself and Midgar as she could before she had to ditch the car.

“Mommy,” Rufus mumbled, rubbing the tears from his eyes. ‘Mommy’ was reserved for when he was crying - a break from the proper decorum of calling her ‘mother’ at his father’s insistence. “What about daddy?”

Margaret felt as though someone had taken hold of her heart and squeezed it tight. Rufus was at an age where he was only just beginning to understand that his father didn’t love him. He was young and innocent still and loved his father regardless of how little he saw him.

“We won’t see daddy again, my darling. But we’ll be okay, won’t we?” She reached her arm back and squeezed his little leg. “It’s just you and me now, my little chocobo.”

Just Margaret and her son - running from the most powerful man on the planet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Got the idea for this pondering what Rufus' mama would look like since the books say he looks more like her (I think he probably looks a lot like both of them). I was picturing a Grace Kelly type but in like Katherine Hepburn getup. Anyway it spiraled from there and now I've got another longfic brewing. Hopefully you'll enjoy it! More soon!


	2. Hunted

Without the suit jacket that perpetually accompanied the Turk uniform, Tseng felt nearly naked, but it was too unbearably hot in the jungles dotting the southern islands off the eastern continent to wear his uniform to proper code. His sleeves were rolled up past his elbow, his hair pulled back in an untidy bun, his tie long since forfeit so that he could unbutton a few of the buttons on his shirt to help mitigate the suffocating heat and humidity.

He wished he had some shorts, but he would have looked so absurd in them that it wasn’t worth the thought. He soldiered on through the overgrowth in his black slacks.

For most of Tseng’s career as a Turk there existed a peripheral awareness of Shinra’s public enemy number one. Margaret Shinra codenamed ‘Midge the Knife’ had at first been a pet project of the President’s, long before Tseng joined Shinra’s ranks. The goal then had been to take care of her and return the President’s son to headquarters, but twenty-three years had passed since then and the Turks had the intel to suggest Midge Shinra was running the eco-terrorist group AVALANCHE - a group that had thus far managed to destroy three Shinra weapons manufacturing facilities as well as one rural reactor, in addition to a number of other annoyances. The escalation had come shortly after Veld’s forced retirement, but had taken a backseat to the war in Wutai for several years.

In that interim period while Tseng was taking leadership of the Turks and dealing with Wutai spies, Heidegger’s men in SOLDIER had been in charge of hunting down Midge and her son, Rufus. But SOLDIERS, barring perhaps the firsts, were brainless brutes who had only managed to narrow down Midge’s location with the assistance of the Turks, then barreled in so loudly and obviously that Midge and her crew always managed to escape.

The President had had enough. He wanted her head on a platter and he wanted Rufus in handcuffs at his feet.

So the task had fallen to Tseng to find them through a more subtle means and take care of the issue.

He did his homework, partially because it was his job as a Turk, but mostly because he would rather be caught dead than walk into a situation unprepared. Midge Shinra was a briefing any Turk had to go through - it was part of academy training, and it had been written into almost every biography of the President. Tseng found all of them dry and self-aggrandizing, but he had read them because it was better to know both who your employer was and who he _thought_ he was.

There was considerably less information about Rufus. He had been a child when his mother absconded with him, but now he was a credible threat: high-ranking within AVALANCHE on his own merits and, if the intel Tseng’s men had gathered was correct, the orchestrator of two of the attacks on weapons plants.

What was clear from Tseng’s research was that neither of the estranged members of the Shinra family should be taken lightly.

They were also good at hiding and it had taken him six months to pinpoint their location to a camp somewhere in the dense jungles surrounding Mideel. Midge knew exactly how to hide her tracks - if the rumors were to be believed, she had been unofficially trained by a Turk. Tseng wasn’t certain he believed that Veld would commit such an indiscretion, mostly because he couldn’t fathom how Veld could continue to work for Shinra for decades after Midge fled Midgar. The fact remained, she knew how to anticipate Shinra’s tactics, which made her an annoyance in addition to a threat.

Months of surveillance flyovers had picked up nothing, until they captured a shot of a ramshackle camp with a blurry image of what was very likely Rufus Shinra.

They didn’t have updated pictures of either of them, just computer processed aging applied to decades-old photographs in an attempt to help the Turks identify the two Shinras. Tseng kept the images on his phone to compare whenever he managed to find the camp in the density of the jungle.

The fact that Midge and Rufus were Shinras meant little to nothing to Tseng. The issue was that they were dissidents: a threat to Shinra’s existence that needed to be summarily dealt with.

Tseng could abide the heat only because he had grown up on the same island and dealt with it for the first several years of his life, but it had been decades since he lived there and he didn’t recall the heat or humidity being quite this oppressive. His canteen was running low - a fresh water stream was now his first priority.

He didn’t have a map to guide him, but he knew how to get by just fine in the wilderness - another necessity of being a Turk. He found a stream after a mile’s walk to the east and knelt beside it, filling his canteen and gulping down the water, then pausing for a moment to sit against a rock and cool himself down a bit. There was never any rush to get a job done - pacing himself always netted better results.

The sounds of the jungle were an excellent assist to his need for subterfuge, drowning out the noise of his feet crunching against the leaves and branches that coated the ground, but it was also a pleasant background while he sat and recovered. Birds chirped all around and occasionally he would hear monkeys chattering in the treetops overhead. It was a good hiding place for Shinra’s most wanted, he had to give them credit for that.

He pulled his phone from his pocket - no service, which was to be expected - and browsed the files he had saved to it, re-reading the subject descriptions he had read plenty of times before, accounts of their crimes against Shinra, pictures of what they looked like at the time of their escape, the uncanny images of what they might look like now, and one blurry image of a man with a sharp nose that bore remarkable resemblance to both the President and Midge Shinra.

Once he felt at least re-hydrated, Tseng continued on through the jungle. His hand moved periodically to the pistol at his hip, a comforting reassurance that he was ready to deal with any immediate threats, though he knew it might be a few days of surveillance before he had the chance to use it on Midge. No one would ever have described him as cocky - but he was appropriately confident in his abilities to get the job done.

As Tseng made his way through the overgrowth, he heard a voice yelling in the distance and came to a halt to listen.

“D! Heel!”

It was a man’s voice and he listened for the man to speak again to try and get a more accurate guess of where he was in relation to Tseng - north if he had to guess, but sound traveled in unusual ways in the jungle.

“Good girl.” The voice was drawing nearer.

Tseng looked around for cover and opted for high ground, lifting himself without much difficulty up into a nearby tree and settling on a heavily covered branch to watch the ground below for the source of the voice.

He appeared after another minute or two, a tall blonde with a sharp nose and a more than passing resemblance to the President. Tseng held his breath as Rufus Shinra passed beneath him, a Shinra attack hound at his heels. The dog wasn’t something Tseng had planned for - she had her nose to the ground sniffling wildly around the small clearing Tseng had been standing in just minutes earlier, trying to trace the foreign scent.

“D,” Rufus folded his arms. “We’re not hunting.”

The dog had stopped at the tree Tseng was sitting in, and though the foliage shielded him somewhat, he knew that if he could see Rufus, Rufus would be able to see him if he looked up. Standing on its hind legs, the dog scratched at the tree bark and whimpered.

“What’s gotten into you?” Rufus demanded. “D, heel! We aren’t hunting.”

The dog looked up into the tree and back at Rufus, tilting its head before sitting back down on its haunches, but it wouldn’t leave the tree, still whimpering lightly.

Tseng held perfectly still. Rufus walked over to the dog, rubbed the thick, leathery tentacle on its head, and glanced up into the tree.

“What do you s-” He stopped short as he locked eyes with Tseng and a split-second decision was made.

Tseng launched himself out of the tree, focusing the dog first, grabbing it with his legs as he rocketed down and twisting his hips to slam it into the tree. It yelped and lay dazed while Tseng got to his feet, ripping his pistol from its holster and training it on Rufus at the same time Rufus pulled a modified shotgun from his back and pointed it at Tseng.

Rufus narrowed his eyes and scanned Tseng’s face, gun held remarkably steady in his arms. The dog was rousing with some difficulty and then Tseng would be outnumbered, but he had not banked on running into Rufus Shinra this far out from the campsite as the sun was setting.

“Who are you?” Rufus demanded.

Tseng said nothing. He kept his pistol pointed at Rufus’ shoulder - he wanted to shoot to injure, not to kill.

“I don’t appreciate you injuring my dog.” Rufus’ voice was cool and calm and there was no hint of fear in his eyes as he stepped sideways toward his dog. “A good Turk would know to consider all possibilities. It’s not her fault you hid your trail poorly. And if my dog can trail you, so can half the predators in this jungle.”

“How did you know I was a Turk?”

“I didn’t,” Rufus smirked. “But thank you for the confirmation.”

Tseng silently cursed himself. He had been so taken off guard by Rufus’ confidence in the statement that for a moment his wits had left him completely. What a fool he was to have said anything. He pressed his lips into a thin line and held Rufus’ gaze, glancing away every few seconds to keep an eye on the dog.

“I’m surprised it took them this long to send you,” Rufus laughed. “All by yourself too? Tragic. D, to me.” The dog got to its feet and moved on shaky legs to stand at Rufus’ side.

“It seems like you’re outnumbered,” Rufus glanced at his dog.

Tseng took the window, firing a shot at Rufus’ shoulder which he deflected at the last moment with the barrel of his gun, firing a warning shot at Tseng’s feet in return. “These bullets won’t feel very good in pieces in your chest,” he said. “I’d be careful if I were you.”

It was frankly embarrassing for Tseng to find himself in this situation. He was the _leader_ of the Turks and he had faced far more formidable opponents than Rufus Shinra both in brawn and in intellect. Rufus was slim - visibly toned, but slim nonetheless. If Tseng could remove the dog and the gun from the equation, he could easily overpower the other man.

“I can see those little cogs in your head turning,” Rufus said, circling sideways, his dog following his movement. “How many more are coming?”

Tseng didn’t reply.

“Tight-lipped now, are we? D, whip.”

The dog shifted on its paws and flicked its head, whipping the tentacle growing from the base of its skull in Tseng’s direction. Tseng sidestepped and fired on the dog, pleased with the yelp of pain that issued as his bullet lodged itself in the dog’s shoulder. It collapsed on its side with a whimper and a fire lit in Rufus’ eyes. He moved on quick feet, firing off another shot with his shotgun - no longer a warning - aiming for Tseng’s chest and only missing because Tseng had the presence of mind to roll behind a tree.

When Tseng emerged on the other side of the tree, he leaped up and fired a shot at Rufus, grazing the side of his arm, but missing his mark. Shooting the dog had melted Rufus’ cool exterior and now his eyes were wide and wild. He reloaded his gun and Tseng moved in for a point-blank shot only to be met with the barrel of gun against the side of his skull, knocking him to the ground and rattling his brain. He rolled onto his back in time to narrowly miss Rufus’ foot aiming straight for his neck, grabbing his leg and yanking him down with him.

The two of them struggled to right themselves, clawing at the damp earth. The dog yelped again as it tried to stand and Rufus turned to it, shouting, “D! Stay!”

Tseng launched himself onto Rufus, bringing a gloved fist against the side of his face and making impact with his jaw, which dazed him long enough for Tseng to press his pistol against Rufus’ shoulder.

“Don’t move.”

Rufus didn’t listen, slamming his gun against the side of Tseng’s head again and drawing blood at his temple. At the same time, Tseng fired his pistol and the bullet tore straight through Rufus’ shoulder, blood blossoming against his white shirt. He let out a howl of pain, but somehow he still managed to pull himself up enough to kneel in front of Tseng, who could not possibly move himself off the ground now. His ears were ringing from the second impact of the gun against his skull, vision slightly blurred. He looked up as Rufus held himself over him.

Rufus’ boot was against his throat, one hand clutching at the wound in his shoulder, the other limp at his side from the pain. “I should kill you,” he spat.

“You should,” Tseng agreed. His heartbeat was pulsing loudly in his ears as blood trickled into his eyes.

Leaning over him, Rufus gripped the bun at the back of Tseng’s skull and yanked him up with some effort. “That would be a mercy you don’t deserve, Turk.”

The butt of the gun made impact with Tseng’s head and he lost what little remained of his ebbing consciousness.

* * *

A month out from their abrupt departure from Midgar found Midge and Rufus living on a rural chocobo farm somewhere in between Gongaga and Corel, just a few miles south of a river the flowed west all the way to the Wutai sea. It was hard to feel comfortable even so ostensibly far from Shinra’s prying eyes. Every day as Midge helped the other stable hands tend the chocobos, she kept an eye on the horizon and listened for the familiar sound of helicopter blades that had yet to come.

It was only a matter of time, she was certain, and she didn’t want to linger long enough to put the lives of the breeder and his stable hands at risk. In another few months, they would have to pack up and move on.

But for now, Rufus was happy, and in the evenings Midge could almost relax, sitting on the porch of the little cabin the breeder had rented to them and watching Rufus run through the fields chasing fireflies and cupping them in his hands. He would run up to the porch beaming from ear to ear and open his hands excitedly to show her, just for the firefly to fly away as soon as he offered it freedom.

Rufus had never seen so much nature at once and she felt badly for it. Their lives had been so heavily guarded in Midgar. Even vacations to the coast had been within the confines of Shinra villas and estates. It was a simple pleasure to watch her son gathering up toads from the creek and picking flowers in the fields, asking her questions about the names for different animals and plants, digging his little toes in the mud and splashing his feet about. He was a smart and inquisitive boy, curious about the new world he found himself in.

But he was also curious about why they left, and why they wouldn’t be returning to Midgar ever again. Midge didn’t want to shelter him from the truth. For one thing, it was important that he knew the seriousness of the situation, though she hated to burden a boy his age with that knowledge. They would spend the rest of their lives trying to stay out from under his father’s thumb and the only way to do so was in solidarity. But besides that, Rufus was too smart and she loved him too much to lie to him. She would not make the mistakes her husband had made with him.

“Mommy,” Rufus asked one evening as the sun began to set. He had stopped calling her mother after the first week outside of his father’s influence. “Can we stay here forever?”

Midge listened for a moment to the comforting sound of the creek toads and the crickets mingling with the soft ‘quarks’ from the birds in the stable. She brushed her hand through Rufus’ hair where he sat on the porch by her legs, scribbling messy drawings into a notebook the chocobo breeder had given him.

“No, darling. We can’t stay forever,” she said. “But we’ll stay for a while.”

Rufus nodded. “Daddy will find us if we stay too long.”

“That’s right.”

He was quiet for a moment. How bittersweet to look at him and see a bit of his father’s face. The man she hated more than anyone else on the planet was also responsible for giving her the greatest joy in her life.

“Show mommy what you’re drawing, Rufus.”

He sat up and offered the notebook to her. It was a messy drawing of a chocobo. She smiled and handed it back to him.

“Do you like it?” he asked.

“Of course. I’d like to have it when you’re done drawing it.”

“Do you think Mr. George will let me ride one of the chocobos sometime?” Rufus went back to scribbling intensely in his notebook.

“I’m sure he would. You should ask him tomorrow.”

Another silence followed. Midge closed her eyes and listened to the sounds of nature all around them, though always, _always_ she was listening beyond it for the sounds of danger as well. George the chocobo breeder knew who they were, but he was friends with members of an anti-Shinra resistance group to the north and had agreed to give them safe harbor. Midge didn’t trust the kindness of strangers much. If it became profitable to turn them over, even to the enemy, she was sure someone would do it. For now, though, the man was technically risking his life to shelter them. It was temporary trust for her, at best, but trust all the same.

In the end, she was the one responsible for her and Rufus’ lives.

“Does Daddy hate me?” Rufus asked out of the blue, setting his notebook down on the porch.

“Oh,” Midge sighed. What did she tell him? Her husband tolerated Rufus because in the long term, he did want an heir to take over the company and, like a man of his rank would, he treated Rufus like just another one of his possessions, one which Midge had stolen from him. “He doesn’t hate you, Rufus. He doesn’t.” She stroked his cheek gently with the back of her hand. “You’ll understand when you’re older. It’s just…complicated.”

Rufus seemed placated by her answer. He yawned and stretched his little arms up into the air.

“That’s right,” Midge said. “I think it’s bedtime.”

She stood up and grabbed his hand, leading him inside the one-room cabin that was now their home. “Go and get changed and brush your teeth.”

He did as she asked. He always did. He was a well-behaved little boy, always eager to please his mother.

When they were both in their beds, she stayed awake, still listening out for the sounds of helicopters, or the sight of a sweeping searchlight overhead. And when she did fall asleep, it was as fitful as every night had been since they left Midgar, filled with dreams of the man she was fleeing, and the man she had left behind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rufus really about to wreck Tseng's ass and not in the good way.
> 
> Thank you for reading! More soon :)


	3. Butting Heads

Rufus sat on a pillow in his mother’s bungalow with heavy bandaging wrapped around his left arm, Dark Nation at his side, a bandage pressed over stitches in her shoulder. Next to him sat Biggs and Jessie - proteges of Barret’s who had been a package deal when he signed on with AVALANCHE nearly half a decade earlier.

Rufus didn’t mind either of them, though they always sided with Barret and Rufus tended to disagree with Barret at most turns. Biggs was friendly and easily the greatest help around camp when it came time for hard labor. Jessie was fun to be around, but overly obvious in her affection for any man who she found remotely attractive. Rufus might have considered it, but he had a firm belief in the age old adage not to shit where you eat.

They were still awaiting the arrival of his mother and Barret, who were securing the Turk in a makeshift cage near the campfire outside. A Turk was the last thing Rufus anticipated when he took his evening patrol with D earlier that day, and unfortunately, he had underestimated the man. He got too cocky when he caught the Turk off guard and it had nearly cost him D’s life.

If he were acting on raw emotion alone, he would have dragged D back to camp before he ever bothered with the unconscious Turk, but if the Turk awoke before he returned and fled, their position would be compromised so, stemming the blood from his bullet wound as best as he could, he carried the Turk back to camp and collapsed near the steps of his bungalow. Biggs and Wedge had gone out to find D and bring her back while Jessie helped Rufus to the medical hut and his mother and Barret took care of the Turk.

“Do you think there are more of them out searching the jungle?” Biggs spoke after several minutes of tense silence.

“It’s a possibility,” Rufus replied. His shoulder throbbed.

“I don’t see why we don’t just put a bullet in his brain and be done with this shit,” Barret’s gruff voice sounded outside the door just before he burst into the bungalow with Rufus’ mother close behind him.

“Barret,” Midge said. “He’s a Turk. He can provide us with valuable information. And even if he won’t give anything up, we could use him as a bargaining chip.”

“I think you’re jus’ sayin’ that ‘cause you’ve got a damn soft spot for the bastards,” Barret hissed.

“Now look here,” Rufus sat up. “Don’t compare that fucking lapdog to Veld!”

“I want your opinion, I’ll ask for it, mama’s boy,” Barret spat.

“ _Enough_.” Midge held up a hand and took a seat at the head of the table. “We need to have a conversation about this Turk.”

“Not a damn scrap of ID on him.”

Barret settled down across the table from Rufus. He was a hulking mass of muscle, his right arm ending in a gnarled stump just above the elbow. Barret had come to join AVALANCHE after Shinra razed the mining town he lived in to build a reactor and a theme park. In the fight against the encroaching Shinra troops, Barret had lost his arm and his wife. He had a special prosthetic arm fashioned into a machine gun that he wore during patrols.

“Of course he didn’t have any identification,” Rufus said. “He’s a Turk. Did you think he’d have a wallet with his name and who to call if he goes missing?”

“Midge, could you reel this damn child in?”

“You’re only five years older than me, you-”

“Rufus, enough,” his mother said firmly. “And enough from you too Barret. We aren’t here to bicker. This is very serious. This is the first time they’ve sent a Turk after us.”

“Clearly our last few attacks made an impact,” Jessie said. “Those explosions packed a punch.”

“We need to torture that fucker until he tells us everything,” Barret spoke next.

Midge shook her head. “Turks are trained to endure all manner of torture. We need to seriously consider how to approach this. The most important factor here is that he _cannot_ be allowed to escape. As it is, once we deal with him - however that might be - we’ll need to leave. I know we voted earlier this week to stay another six months, but-”

“You’re right. No doubt about it now,” Barret said. “Which is why I say we jus’ see what he’ll tell us and then put a bullet between his eyes.”

“That’s not a solution,” Rufus complained. “You can’t just approach everything guns blazing.”

“Do you have suggestions, Rufus, or are you just speaking to contest everything Barret says?” His mother asked.

Rufus bristled. “We should try to reach out to Veld. He could help us.”

“We both know that’s too dangerous. Compromising his position isn’t acceptable.”

“Well no one is suggesting anything helpful here. As loathe as I am to agree with Barret, torture might be the best plan of action. He might not yield, but we don’t know for sure. Isn’t the point to hit at his psyche anyway?” Rufus demanded.

“Where are you going with this?” Biggs asked.

“Good cop bad cop,” Rufus said. “Barret can go in guns blazing, smack him up, break some bones. Biggs can go in and-”

“No way.” Biggs shook his head. “I’m not helping to torture anybody. Sorry, but that’s where I draw the line. I’m good at recon, I’m not interested in this.”

“I could do it!” Jessie offered readily.

“Rufus will do it,” Midge said. “He came up with the idea. Put that sharp wit of yours to use.” She laughed, and almost immediately her face turned deadly serious again. “We need a guard outside his cell at all times. Don’t underestimate him.”

“I’ll take first shift,” Biggs offered. “Since I’m not helping with the rest.”

“Good. If we’re all in agreement?”

“Yeah,” Barret conceded. “I guess it’s a good idea.”

“Then let’s convene. Biggs, come find me when your shift is up and I’ll take over.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Biggs saluted and hopped up off his pillow, waltzing outside to take up his post. Jessie followed him out and Barret was the next to his feet.

“I’ll pop in on him in a few hours when he’s awake.”

“Thank you, Barret.”

Once everyone was gone, Rufus shifted to face his mother. “I still think we should contact Veld.”

“Drop it, Rufus.” She pursed her lips.

“Mother,” he protested. “If this isn’t a situation that warrants his help, what is?”

“Veld has done enough for us over the last twenty years. This won’t be the last Turk they send after us. We knew it was only a matter of time. Veld _prepared us_ for this. It’s selfish of you to suggest we drag him from his peace into our mess. Every time we contact him, it risks both of our lives.”

“I _know_ that,” Rufus said, staring at his hands. “But-”

“Enough. You need to rest. You’re lucky you weren’t hurt worse than you were. Do you need help getting to your cabin?”

“No,” Rufus growled. He pushed himself up to his feet with some difficulty. “D, with me.”

She hobbled along behind him as he made for the door.

“Don’t stew on this, son,” his mother sighed. “Just focus on your recovery.”

“ _Good night_.” He snapped, slamming the door to the bungalow behind him as he went. He didn’t often let his anger get the better of him, but every once in a while with his mother he was a petulant child again, pretending he didn’t understand the severity of the situation in a selfish fit of irritation. He _knew_ it was dangerous to contact Veld, but it was unprecedented for a Turk to be out hunting for them. Didn’t it call for his assistance? Who better to handle a Turk than another Turk? Veld probably knew this mystery man.

But Veld was a touchy subject with his mother and he knew that as well.

The cage they set up for the Turk had been a chocobo pen at one point, until beak rot swept through their small flock and killed the few birds they had managed to secure over the last few years. Now a large padlock had been placed on it and the Turk lay on a cot with his head bandaged, still unconscious. Rufus stopped outside the cage and stared at him for a moment.

“Wake me when Barret’s done with his show,” he said to Biggs. “I’ll step in after.”

“Will do,” Biggs nodded. “I hope your arm feels better, buddy.”

‘Buddy’. ‘Bro’. Terms of endearment Rufus never cared for. He offered no thanks for the sentiment, walking up the steps into his bungalow and holding the door open to allow D to hobble inside first. She curled up on the square cushion at the foot of Rufus’ bed and closed her eyes.

“Good girl,” Rufus praised her. She deserved a fresh steak for taking a bullet for him.

Rufus pulled his clothes off with some difficulty, his arm twinging with pain every time he moved it. What he really wanted more than anything was to soak his muscles in a hot bath, but they didn’t have that luxury in the jungle, so he lay down on the bed naked, sweaty, and miserable as he tried to sleep.

But all he could think about was the Turk, and what else might be looming on the horizon.

* * *

The roads leading north to the town of Reln were not much more than uneven dirt paths worn down over time by the wheels of chocobo wagons and, later, cars and buses. Midge Shinra sat at the back of a charter bus, Rufus next to her with his head against the window sleeping soundly.

Tomorrow would be his eighth birthday, and it had been a little more than a year since they fled their life in Midgar. They had enjoyed a pleasant and quiet life on the chocobo farm for longer than she had ever anticipated, but every day of peace filled her with more and more dread about the future. So she finally made the decision for them to pack up and leave to protect themselves and the people on the farm they had come to care for.

George had given them a list of names: safe harbors for enemies of Shinra. She wasn’t sure _why_ enemies of Shinra would take pity on two people who had benefited so much from their reign…until they hadn’t. George had been a good friend and had allowed Rufus to live a somewhat normal life for the last year, but Midge still worried that someone on that long list of names would be more interested in the money that might be earned from turning the two of them over to her husband.

What other options did they have, really? She would have to rely on the kindness of strangers, at least a little longer.

Rufus stirred, clutching the stuffed chocobo George had given him to his chest and resting his head against Midge’s shoulder. She stroked his head and closed her eyes. There was this at least.

Reln was a quaint town in the middle of the countryside on the eastern continent, surrounded by fields of flowers and acres of farmland, the town itself lined with cobblestone paths leading into cute little stone buildings. The bus stopped at the edge of town and Midge and Rufus climbed off, along with a handful of other passengers, and made their way into town.

Their contact in Reln was a woman named Artemis. All Midge knew was her name and address, so she and Rufus followed the paths through town until they found her house: a little ramshackle cottage behind a white wooden fence, the yard teeming with all manner of erratic, but well-tended plant life.

Midge knocked on the door and held Rufus close to her side.

The door flew open a second later and a lanky woman with a mane of wiry black hair and eyes made large by thick spectacles appeared in the doorway. She looked at the two of them and narrowed her eyes.

“Can I help you?”

Midge offered up the list of contacts. “George sent us. Are you Artemis?”

“Ah!” She shoved the list back at Midge. “Just call me Artie. You must be the Shinras. Come on in. Never thought I’d say _that_ willingly, huh?” She walked away without another word, leaving Midge gaping at her absence in the doorway. Midge hurried inside after her and shut the door.

The inside of the house was as disorganized as the outside: piles of crafting goods in one corner, books on top of and spilling out of several bookshelves, house plants wherever they would fit, several cats sleeping softly on windowsills and in chairs. Midge wound her way through the maze-like building to the kitchen in the back where Artie stood waiting for a kettle to boil.

“You’re _much_ prettier in person,” she offered.

“Oh,” Midge sat uncertainly in a precarious looking chair and Rufus sat next to her. “Thank you?”

“I hope you like tea. If not, I’m sure I have coffee somewhere.” Artie stretched and glanced through the top shelf of one of her cabinets. She must have been at least six feet tall, though probably taller, with a slender figure, her movements surprisingly graceful.

“Tea is fine,” Midge said.

“What was your name again? Margaret?”

“You can call me Midge.”

Artie laughed: a loud, melodic sound. “I like that. ‘Midge’. And the kid? Rupert?”

“Rufus,” he answered himself, puffing his chest out.

“Very brave, little chocobo,” Midge chuckled.

Artie put her hands on her hips and faced Rufus. “Wow, kid, you’re like, basically an adult huh?”

“Yeah!” Rufus stood up and mimicked her pose.

“Grab my arm, huh?” She held it out and he looked from Artie to Midge uncertainly.

“Go on,” Midge urged him.

He grabbed her arm and she lifted him up with a surprising strength, swinging Rufus back and forth as his feet lifted off the floor. He burst into a fit of giggles and yelled, “Faster! Faster!” and she complied.

Artie spent the entire afternoon entertaining Rufus, carrying the teapot into her crowded, but cozy, living room where they sat and chatted for several hours. She taught Rufus how to be gentle and friendly with the cats, coaxing them over to let him pet them, and then she taught him a few jokes that were probably a little inappropriate for his age, but Midge didn’t mind - there would be worse things for him to know.

It was only once Rufus had tired himself out and fell asleep in Midge’s lap with a cat curled against him that Artie settled into an armchair and took on a more serious tone.

“You’re a big talking point on the insurgent circuit, you know?”

Midge tensed. “Am I?”

“Relax,” Artie said quickly. “Some of the fuckheads who run in the same circles as my group would probably sell you back to Shinra for the right price, but their brains are full of holes so what do they know?” She let out a bark of laughter. “A real anti-Shinra rebel would support anyone Shinra had hurt, regardless of what rank they held before, don’t you think?”

“Well,” Midge said, relaxing again. “I at least appreciate that you think that way.”

“So what’s your plan exactly? I mean, you can stay here. I gave George my name for a reason. And there’s plenty of space.” She scratched the back of her head. “I’ll have to clear out the room in the attic, but that’s fine.”

“I don’t know what my plan is,” Midge answered honestly. “I just want to keep Rufus safe and out of his father’s claws.”

“He’s much better off with you,” Artie nodded sagely. “But you can’t run forever, right? Shinra has eyes everywhere. Look, you just got here, I’m not trying to pile on you right away or anything. But wouldn’t you like to strike first? I mean, phew,” she let out a low whistle, “could you imagine the look on that bastard’s face if there was an attack on a Shinra building and he knew _you_ were the one that did it?”

“Oh, no,” Midge shook her head. “I appreciate where you’re coming from, but…I think the best thing for the two of us is to keep our heads down and stay out of harms’ way.”

Artie was silent for a moment. She pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose. “Well, stay as long as you like. But I think you know better than anyone that Shinra won’t stop trying to hunt you down either way. Might as well make an impact if you’re going to be running either way.” She shrugged. “Anyway, I’ll drop the issue. The little guy’s a real cutie. I’ll make him some pancakes in the morning.” She spoke so quickly it gave Midge whiplash. “You good to sleep down here until I get the attic picked up?”

“Of course,” Midge said. “And thank you. I know you’re risking your safety to help us.”

Artie waved a dismissive hand. “Oh, I do way stupider shit that risks my life on a daily basis.”

And with that she disappeared up the stairs.

Midge leaned up and turned the lamp behind her off and lay in the darkness, Rufus sleeping soundly against her. She could hear the cat curled against Rufus purring softly as his little fingers gripped its fur. She had never stepped foot in a house quite like this or met anyone quite like Artie, but she felt safe there - maybe safer than she had on the farm.

Artie’s words lingered as she closed her eyes and drifted to sleep. A fire had been burning inside of Midge from the moment they fled Midgar.

Maybe she did want to be the one who lit the fuse.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I put Artie in this chapter not totally knowing what I wanted to do with her but as I've been writing ahead she has easily become one of my favorite characters to write and just a really fun OC so I hope you enjoy her as the story progresses. It's funny because I keep tweeting about how this fic is just a lot of gratuitous Tsengru smut but sorry in advance that it's gonna take a few chapters before we get to that...dang plot getting in the way. 
> 
> Thanks for reading! More soon!


	4. Captivity

“Wake up, fucker!”

Tseng was brought abruptly back into consciousness by the shock of cold water drenching his head and chest. He sat up coughing, his head throbbing, the world spinning around him as he moved. It took him a second to take in his surroundings and remember what had happened to put him in this state.

The last thing he remembered was the butt of Rufus Shinra’s gun slamming against his head. Before he could fully take in the cage he now found himself in though, the flat of large palm slapped against the side of his face. It stung, but hardly trumped the pain of his brain still rattling around inside his skull.

“You feel like havin’ a little chat, Turk?”

Tseng rolled his head from side to side to crack his neck, facing the man currently assaulting him. He was all muscle, a massive machine gun taking up residence where his right forearm should have been, dark sunglasses covering his eyes despite the fact that it was pitch black out.

Not that Tseng would have answered this man anyway, but he wasn’t afforded the opportunity. Before there was even time to formulate a response, his hand gripped Tseng’s shirt and lifted him away from the hard little cot he was sitting on, holding their faces close together. His breath stank.

“Who the fuck else was out there with you?”

Tseng stared at him and said nothing. This man had no clue what he was doing - had probably gotten all of his ideas of what torture entailed from bad movies. If the worst he was going to do was scream at Tseng and knock him around a little bit, there was simply no reason to say anything or react in any way to his behavior. Better not to give himself up. It had been bad enough letting his defenses slip when he ran into Rufus Shinra unexpectedly.

“You need your ears checked!?” The man yelled. He threw Tseng against the wall of the cage and Tseng slumped to the ground and remained there. A boot collided with his side a moment later. “This ain’t half of what I’m gonna do to you if you don’ start talkin’ you piece of shit Shinra lapdog.”

People always thought the worst thing to call a Turk was a lapdog, but most Turks accepted that they were simply loyal pawns in Shinra’s game. At the end of the day Tseng was merely an extension of the company, acting on their behest and in their interests. Using an unsavory term for it didn’t make it less true.

The only thing the man assaulting him seemed to know how to do was yell and hit, which he alternated between for a while. The swift kicks of his boot into Tseng’s ribs probably hurt worst of all of it, but it was nothing Tseng hadn’t dealt with. He remained silent and unmoving while the man roughed him up, screamed in his face, and demanded answers.

When he was done with his theatrics, he tossed Tseng back against the cot. “I’ll be back for more later, lapdog.”

Tseng watched him go, slamming the cage door behind him and locking it with a padlock. A man with an assault rifle in his arms stood guarding the door. They were at the foot of a circular clearing of houses, with a central fire pit in the middle - this was the camp Tseng had seen in the surveillance pictures.

It was stupid of them to fail to bind his hands, but they had at least taken all of his effects. He could think of a few ways, given the time or necessary tools, to escape from that cell, but for the time being he would wait. He peeled his shirt off and examined his side, where large welts and bruises were already forming on his skin. They would have to try harder than brutish attacks if they wanted him to talk.

“I don’t suppose you’ll give me any water,” he said to the man standing guard.

No reply.

Well, they would have to feed and hydrate him at some point if they wanted information. He lay down on the uncomfortable cot and closed his eyes, trying to draw his focus away from the pulsing ache in his head.

* * *

The next time Tseng awoke, the first hints of dawn trickled in through the treeline, just enough light for him to make out the man seated on a stool on the other side of the cage. Tseng sat up abruptly and rubbed the sleep from his eyes. It was Rufus Shinra, his dog by his side - no, this one was bigger - another Shinra guard hound.

“Did you have a pleasant nap?” Rufus asked.

Tseng stared at him wordlessly. His shoulder was wrapped in thick bandaging where he had been shot.

“You must be thirsty.”

Rufus crossed the small cage and stood in front of Tseng’s cot, offering forth a canteen full of water. Tseng looked at it, but didn’t trust that it was just water.

“Don’t worry, it’s not poisoned. Look,” Rufus took a swig from the canteen and offered it back to Tseng.

This was a suitable enough demonstration for him - his throat was parched and he was dehydrated from sweating. He snatched the canteen from Rufus and sipped at the water slowly.

Rufus took a seat back on the stool. “I wasn’t very happy about what you did to my dog, but she’ll be fine. She’s tough.” His eyes scanned Tseng’s face, trailing down to his body, marred with bruises. “Barret did a number on you.”

Sometimes less severe injuries looked far worse than the truly damaging ones. Tseng knew this as a Turk, but he remained silent.

“Yeah,” Rufus laughed. “Barret said you weren’t much of a talker.”

They sat in silence for several minutes. Rufus reached down and scratched behind the ears of the dog seated at his side and it leaned into his hand, though it never took its eyes off of Tseng. He was acutely aware that one word from Rufus and those jaws would be around his throat.

Rufus seemed to notice him watching the dog, because he said. “I’m sorry, does she make you uncomfortable? Mother, can you take Stella?”

It was then that Tseng noticed the figure guarding the door was no longer the man with the rifle. Instead, as she turned around, he saw Midge Shinra, pistols strapped in holsters at both hips. She glared into the cell and opened it, whistling for the dog, who readily trotted out. She locked the door behind her and she and Rufus exchanged a wordless glance, then she was gone, leading the dog into the largest bungalow at the north end of the camp.

“There,” Rufus held his hands out. “Just the two of us. Can I get you something?”

For an organization that had bested Shinra several times now, Tseng thought they were idiots. The transparency of their plan was absurd.

“Oh,” Tseng finally spoke. “Will you ply me with food and water and make me comfortable so your friend can come back and smash his gun against my face?”

Rufus didn’t falter. “This wasn’t my first plan, but I was vetoed.”

“You’d be better off killing me,” Tseng said. And this was true. He would be dead either way. There was a tracker tucked into the band in his hair for Shinra to follow his location and when he failed to turn up a report, they would do a flyover and bomb the camp without discrimination. He didn’t particularly care for the fact that _this_ was the mission that was going to lead to his death.

“That’s probably true, but as I told you before, I don’t think it’s a mercy you particularly deserve.”

Mercy was a weakness, Tseng agreed, but in a situation like this anger was just as much of a weakness.

“So that’s it isn’t it?” Rufus asked. “There won’t be any bargaining. You’ll die before you talk: loyal to Shinra to the bitter end.”

“That’s it,” Tseng agreed.

“You don’t value your life any more than that?”

“I pledged my life to Shinra when I became a Turk.”

Rufus smirked. “You know, I’m a Shinra. Does that mean you owe me the same loyalty?”

“Obviously not.”

Tseng had often wondered why Midge and Rufus retained the last name of a man they had spent more than twenty years running from. Margaret Shinra’s maiden name was Hale, why hadn’t she reverted to that? Or taken a new name? He suspected the matter was psychological. The President’s entire persona was wrapped up in what Shinra brought to the people and nothing got under his skin like the leader of the most prominent anti-Shinra terrorist group sharing his name.

“Do you have a name?” Rufus asked. When Tseng didn’t respond, he sighed. “Does knowing your name change anything about this situation?”

“Does not knowing it change anything?” Tseng replied. Another silence followed.

“I’m sure you think you know my mother and I,” Rufus said. “I’m sure they teach you all sorts of things about us in your academy and I guarantee half of the information is lies. Why support an organization hell bent on destruction?”

“I suppose I wouldn’t expect an eco-terrorist to understand.”

Rufus scoffed. “I don’t give a shit about the planet. Neither does my mother. The rest of them do and that’s fine: whatever motive gets results. This isn’t about saving the planet from Shinra for us. It’s about saving the people from Shinra. Mako, no mako, whatever.” He waved his hand. “People shouldn’t have to suffer for my father’s greed.”

“A naive viewpoint.”

“Naive?” Rufus raised his eyebrows. “You’re calling me naive when you spend most of your time in the President’s ivory tower?”

“No,” Tseng corrected. “I get my hands dirty so that your father can spend _his_ time in the ivory tower.”

What Tseng actually thought about the President was irrelevant. He was an ineffective leader at best, with a brown-nosing right-hand man. In truth, Tseng’s loyalty lay with the Turks. Until the last few years, that loyalty had been placed primarily with his mentor, Veld. When the President died and someone else took over, Tseng would continue to do his job, because it was the only life he had known for fifteen years.

No use considering such a future, since he would undoubtedly be dead in a few days.

“What a proud man, gloating about killing innocent people at the President’s behest.”

“At your father’s behest,” Tseng corrected.

He saw the visible reaction in Rufus as he said it, mouth twitching, brow furrowing. He _did_ look like the President, but he also looked a good deal like Midge Shinra - a strange mix of the two.

“That man has never been my father.”

Tseng leaned back on his cot and shrugged. “It makes no difference to me.”

“So then,” Rufus stood up and pulled his shotgun from his back. “Should I just end it now? Kill you?” He pressed the muzzle of the gun against the underside of Tseng’s chin and forced him to look up at him. Tseng was unconcerned, mostly because he knew Rufus wouldn’t pull the trigger. He had gotten under his skin, which was his job as a Turk anyway - a small success in an otherwise unmitigated failure of a mission.

“If that’s what you want to do, then do it,” Tseng said. “I think if you wanted to, however, you would have already pulled the trigger.”

Rufus clenched his jaw and withdrew the gun, placing it behind his back once more. He stalked away wordlessly and Tseng sipped at the canteen he had left behind before lying down and going back to sleep.

* * *

On the day of Rufus’ ninth birthday, Midge Shinra made the decision to go all in.

Artie made Rufus a cake from scratch, complete with stray cat hairs, Midge was sure. When they still lived in Midgar, Midge had spared no expense for Rufus’ birthdays, even the ones he wouldn’t remember: elaborate cakes from the best bakeries in the city, mountains of presents, all of Midgar’s most important socialites.

She thought he looked far happier sitting at the table in Artie’s kitchen blowing out the candles on the lopsided cake with untidy icing that read ‘Happy birthday Rufus’. Midge served up the cake, Artie scooped out some ice cream, and Rufus cradled one of the cats in one arm while he dug his fork into his piece with a contented grin.

“Nine years old, little man!” Artie ruffled his hair and he frowned. “Oh, sorry. Too old to have your hair ruffled now?”

“Yes,” Rufus grumbled. “I’m almost ten and that’s pretty old.”

Artie laughed loudly. “You’re right, my apologies.”

It had been a good year living with Artie. They had all the simple pleasures of the countryside they had enjoyed on the farm, with more urban luxuries like a produce market, shops, and friendly neighbors. Artie’s garden was the most peaceful place Midge had ever known and most evenings the two of them would sit out on her patio sipping wine while Rufus played with the cats.

Six months into the arrangement, after Rufus had gone to bed, Artie kissed Midge after the two of them had shared an entire bottle of wine. Since then, they had shared a bed on occasion - it never felt necessary to discuss the meaning of it - it was simply two women enjoying the other’s company with a sense of casual camaraderie Midge had seldom known. There was a lingering sense of guilt some days - she still loved Veld and she missed him dearly. But she knew they would likely never see each other again, and she still had needs.

Everyone who met Rufus seemed to take a liking to him, but none so much as Artie. She had taken him under her wing as though he were her own child, and he fondly referred to her as his aunt.

Midge knew no happiness could be eternal for the two of them, but she wanted to hold onto it as long as possible.

After they ate their cake, the two of them sat on the couch while Rufus opened his presents. It was the biggest indulgence Midge had allowed herself in a long time, but she was bringing in money by working labor on a local farm during the day while Artie helped teach Rufus in between meetings with her ‘group’ as she referred to them. The gifts weren’t nearly what she could have afforded back home, but Rufus hardly knew the difference anyway.

“Artie,” Midge said while Rufus played with his new gifts. “I want to attend one of your meetings.”

Artie didn’t look remotely surprised. She curled her legs underneath her and faced Midge more directly. “I’ve been waiting for you to say that for months. What changed?”

“Honestly?” Midge looked her right in the eyes, “I’ve been so happy here with you that I…” She closed her eyes and shook her head. “I want to fight for this. I want to fight so that Rufus can have a happy, peaceful life. And I know it won’t be easy, but I want to try anyway.”

Artie clapped her hands together and smiled broadly. “We’re having a meeting next week. I’ll bring you. And I’ll warn you,” she added, “most of them will be really excited that you’re joining us, but some of them feel pretty strongly that you’re better used as bait. Now, I know you well enough to know you won’t tolerate that kind of bullshit, but make sure they know it too.”

“Of course,” Midge nodded.

“I can’t wait to see the look on that bastard’s face when he finds out you’re on our side now.”

Midge couldn’t wait either.

* * *

When daylight came, Tseng watched as the members of AVALANCHE, or at least this main cell, convened around the fire to look in at his cage and whisper to one another. They held a meeting inside the largest hut, which he had surmised over the last few hours belonged to Midge Shinra. And apart from staring and whispering, they largely ignored him.

There were fewer of them than he would have expected, but he knew this was just the leadership cell. Midge Shinra had units all across the globe, but it was safest for her and her top-ranking officials to stay hidden. Tseng’s colleagues had been dealing with a particularly irksome cell in Midgar recently - he wondered how it was that Midge got information to them in a timely manner hiding away in the middle of the jungle with no modern luxuries and no cell service.

A portly man with a red bandana began to prepare breakfast while the others left to run patrols in the jungle. At some point, Rufus Shinra came out of his cabin and sat down on a log bench by the fire to converse with the cook and a young woman with a red headband tying her hair back.

The girl fawned over Rufus, lightly squeezing his injured arm, laughing as she spoke to him. Rufus largely seemed to ignore her advances. Tseng couldn’t make out what they were saying, but periodically, the three of them would glance his way. The members of AVALANCHE returned in time for the food to be ready and all of them - there were ten that Tseng counted - sat down around the fire to eat and converse, though he could tell they were being careful not to discuss any plans in his presence.

Midge watched him like a hawk while she ate and he considered once again the rumor that she and Veld had been involved.

Veld would never have done something so foolish, Tseng was sure of it.

As the meal concluded, Tseng’s own stomach rumbling loudly to remind him of his hunger, Rufus stood next to his mother and the two of them engaged in a heated argument. Tseng tried to pick up on what they were saying, but they were doing a good job of keeping their voices down, going back and forth about something before Rufus walked over to the large frying pan containing the remnants of their meal and scooped more food out of it.

To Tseng’s great surprise, he brought it to the cage and slipped it through an opening at the bottom of the door, followed by a fresh canteen of water. Tseng looked from the food to Rufus.

“Give me your other canteen so I can switch them out,” Rufus demanded.

Tseng could see no reason to argue. The Shinra bombers were very likely on their way and he supposed if he had to go, he would rather do so with some food in his belly and without a parched throat. So he grabbed his empty canteen and passed it through the door back to Rufus.

“Why are you feeding me?” he asked, more out of his own curiosity than anything else.

Rufus fixed him with a hard stare and said nothing. Tseng looked down at the plate: some grilled vegetables and meat of questionable origin. He didn’t eat meat anyway, but the vegetables would be tolerable. He took the plate and the canteen back to his cot and ate quietly, Rufus still watching him.

In the bright morning sun, it was much easier to make out his features and all Tseng could say about him was that he was strikingly handsome, even covered in a thin sheen of sweat (or perhaps because of it). That line of thought was just Tseng’s mind wandering with the knowledge he would be dead soon. It would have been nice to go out with a bang, literally or figuratively. The way Rufus was staring at him, he wasn’t particularly certain whether he wanted to kill him or fuck him, but Tseng knew from experience the two could sometimes go hand in hand.

“Your mother didn’t want to feed me, did she?” Tseng asked, chewing on something that might have been undercooked jicama.

“No. She didn’t.”

“So why doesn’t she just kill me herself then?”

“You seem pretty blase about dying,” Rufus bit back.

“It is an inevitability in my line of work.” At thirty, he felt he was pretty much living on borrowed time as a Turk. Before this mission, he wouldn’t have given himself more than ten years. Veld had been far and away the oldest and longest-lasting of any Turk. Thirty was still fairly decent considering the number of near-death experiences he had faced.

Nearly a minute passed. Rufus remained, hovering by the cage, though he had at least stopped staring at Tseng the entire time.

Tseng finished his poorly cooked vegetables and set the plate aside.

“Not a fan of cripshay meat?” Rufus asked.

“Not a fan of meat, period.”

“Still not going to tell me your name?” He raised an eyebrow.

“To what end?”

“I can take over for you, Rufus,” the woman he had been talking to earlier bounded over. Rufus glanced sideways at her, and then back to Tseng. The woman followed his gaze.

“Huh. He’s handsome up close.”

Rufus scoffed and rolled his eyes, walking away from the woman and the cage.

“What?” She called after him. “Just because he’s a Turk doesn’t mean I can’t think he’s good looking!” She turned sharply back to Tseng with a glare. “Don’t get any ideas.”

Even if Tseng were the type of person to try and sleep his way out of a situation - better to leave that to Reno - he wasn’t interested in women anyway, so it was a moot point on every possible level. He stared back at the woman unflinchingly until his gaze unnerved her and she turned around, which is all he had really wanted.

He wished the terrorists had at least left him his watch, but he could roughly estimate the time from the sun’s position in the sky.

By nightfall, the bombers would undoubtedly be there.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tseng's not taking any amateur bullshit. Also one of you guessed Tseng had a tracker on him before this chapter so kudos.
> 
> More soon!


	5. Fire in the Hole

The decision had been made to pack up and leave. It was bittersweet as Rufus gathered what few belongings he cared to keep with him. Two years out in the wilderness had been plenty enough to last him for a while - it was pleasant to consider running water, and real food prepared by actual chefs at a restaurant, a soft bed with a real mattress instead of a flimsy roll stuffed with chocobo feathers, _air conditioning_. But this jungle had still been their home for two years, and no matter how long they stayed in one place, Rufus was always sad to say goodbye when they left.

There wasn’t much he owned worth brining along. Most of what he packed were practical items: his field journal, a booklet of plans he had mapped out, some of D’s effects, and his weapons and materia. There were a handful of sentimental things he held onto throughout the years though. At the bottom of his pack was what remained of a tattered old chocobo toy he had been given by George the chocobo farmer when he was only seven. It was missing an eye and a leg and in desperate need of a wash, but it reminded him of what they had been through, so he left it there to keep with him. There was also a small book of photos he had kept over the years - most of them were from the years they had lived with aunt Artie, but there were others from more recent times. The oldest was a picture of his mother holding him right after he had been born.

All in all, everything he cared about could fit into a camping pack he carried on his back. From the state of his pack, it might be time for a new one wherever they ended up next.

There had been a prolonged argument about the Turk. Rufus didn’t like him any more than the rest of the group did, and he had let the man get under his skin during their conversation, but he still felt he deserved basic human decency. His mother and Barret wanted to leave him to starve in the cage once they had left, confident there would be no way for him to escape. Rufus thought it would be kinder to just put a bullet between his eyes and end it, not that he necessarily thought the Turk deserved mercy - it just seemed needlessly cruel to leave a man to suffer. If he was going to die either way, why not end it on their terms? Besides that, he wasn’t confident the cage was foolproof and they didn’t want him getting out.

He was considering this as he rested his pack against the bed and tended to D’s injured leg, which was healing quickly thanks to his materia. The plan was to leave early the next morning, so he needed to get to bed if he stood any chance of getting a decent night’s sleep before they headed out. As he finished wrapping D’s leg and started to unbutton his shirt, though, he heard the distant but all too familiar sound of a Shinra plane.

Years on the run from Shinra had given Rufus a keen sense of hearing when it came to the sounds of different Shinra-issue vehicles. A tank would shake the ground to announce its arrival, the helicopters had a steady pulse as their blades turned, and the planes - especially the bombers - sounded like a low, distant whistle.

That whistle is what he heard now.

“D, with me!” He yelled, slinging his pack onto his back, securing his weapons, and running out of his bungalow.

His mother heard it too - she was already on the porch of her own bungalow, pack on her back, heading for Barret’s house to rouse him.

Rufus cupped his hands to his mouth. “Everyone out!” He yelled. “Shinra bombers are inbound! Get out!”

Slowly but surely, doors began to open as the others flooded out into the camp. Barret emerged with his young daughter, Marlene, on his shoulders, his own guard dog - another of D’s litter mates - at his heels.

The planes reached them, whistling past overhead and dropping the first bomb. The space where his mother’s bungalow was exploded into flames, wood and other debris flying out in all directions. Rufus staggered backward from the blast, thankful that his mother was already on the other side of the camp, ushering the others along with her.

Another bomb hit and destroyed the bungalow next to Rufus’. He fell back into the dirt as the closer blast temporarily blinded him.

“Everyone go! Run! We’ll meet up in Mideel! Hurry now!” He heard his mother yell.

A third bomb fell and there was fire separating them now. Rufus struggled up, D nudging him to help him along. The group had dispersed into the jungle to escape the blasts. He gathered his wits and began to run, stopping just short of the edge of the clearing and turning to look back at the cage where the Turk sat in his cot, evidently awaiting his death.

Logically, Rufus knew he should just leave the Turk to die. It was a poetic end, being bombed by your own people, but that wasn’t how his mother had raised him. He doubled back to the cage, the heat from the flames positively sweltering so close, and smashed his gun against the padlock.

“What are you doing?” the Turk demanded.

“Stand back!” Rufus yelled.

He listened and Rufus pointed his rifle at the door, firing it against the lock and shattering the mechanism. He pulled it loose and yanked the door to the cage open.

“If you don’t want to die, then come with me.”

The Turk didn’t need to be told twice. The two of them ran just in time for another bomb to collide with the ground right in front of the cage, sending both of them flying forward into the overgrowth, where they went tumbling downhill for several seconds, landing hard against the dense earth several dozen yards away.

Rufus lay on his back dazed, D next to him, snarling at the Turk, who lay in a similar position a few feet away.

“Heel,” Rufus said, sitting up with some difficulty. The Turk sat up as well and for a moment they stared at each other. “We’re too close still. We could get hit by a blast.”

“Why did you save me?” he demanded.

“We can chat all you like once we’re clear of those planes,” Rufus snapped. “You can go your own way if you want, but I know these jungles a hell of a lot better than I’m guessing you do, so you might want to stick with me.”

Whatever else he was, the Turk wasn’t stupid. He hurried along after Rufus and they put as much distance between themselves and the campsite as possible, more blasts sounding in the distance as they ran. It was more than a mile before they stopped, Rufus’ lungs burning and his legs aching - though that might have been more to blame on the blast that knocked him back than the running. They came to a halt by a patch of rocks on the jungle floor and Rufus sat down with his back against a tree while he tried to catch his breath.

The Turk looked winded too, though perhaps less so than Rufus. He tried to sit down against the rocks, but D blocked his path, tentacle raised at the ready, growling deep from her chest. The Turk held himself completely still and wisely avoided meeting her gaze.

“D,” Rufus said, gripping her neck. “Heel.”

She sat back on her haunches and stopped growling, but didn’t take her eyes off of the Turk. He sat down and checked himself over for any injuries. Rufus did the same, passing himself over with the restore materia in his glove as he encountered a few cuts and bruises.

“Are you injured?” he asked the Turk.

“No. Why did you bother rescuing me?” he asked again. “You could have died. You almost did.”

“It’s called mercy,” Rufus sighed. “I’m sure you’re unfamiliar with the concept.”

“Mercy is a weakness,” he replied easily. “Besides, you said I was undeserving of mercy, did you not?”

“I know what I said. Look, I thought about leaving you. It would have been ironic for you to see your end at your own employer’s hands.”

“Plenty of Turks die that way. It wouldn’t have been nearly as ironic as you think it would have.”

“Well it doesn’t matter now,” Rufus said, taking a swig from his canteen and offering some to the Turk. He stared at it for a few seconds, but eventually he took it and gulped down some of the water before handing it back. They sat in silence except for the ambient noise of the jungle around them. In the distance, they could see the glow of the fires engulfing the camp. The jungle was wet enough that the fires wouldn’t readily spread too far, but it was worth keeping an eye on.

“So now what?” the Turk asked.

“Now we try and make our way to Mideel.”

“And why should I go with you?”

“If you want to get lost in the jungle, be my guest. Mideel is the nearest city for hundreds of miles. But besides that, I’m the one with the guns and you appear to be unarmed, so I don’t think you have much of a choice. We’ll decide what to do with you in Mideel.”

The Turk scoffed and said nothing.

Once some of Rufus’ strength returned, he stood up and walked over to where the Turk sat on the rocks. He didn’t flinch or move a single muscle as Rufus crouched down beside him.

“Now,” he said, “we’re going to be stuck in this jungle together for several days, at least, so let’s get a few things straight.” He gripped the bun at the back of the Turk’s head abruptly and yanked until he got a reaction - nothing more than a rush of air from his lungs at the sudden movement, but still an acknowledgment. “I know you have a tracker on you somewhere. That’s how the bombers knew where to hit us, isn’t it?” Rufus’ pulse was pounding in his ears. He had been dwelling on the thought while they sat in silence.

“What do you plan on doing to me if I don’t answer you?”

Rufus grabbed the machete he kept at his hip and pressed the point lightly between the Turk’s legs. “The only thing you’re doing is delaying the inevitable. Is this worth it?”

“Let go of my hair,” he said firmly. Rufus tugged again and pressed the machete with slightly more pressure. The Turk let out an annoyed huff. “The tracker is in my hairband. If you let me take it out, you can do whatever you’d like with it. I’m not particularly keen on another flyover blowing us both to pieces.”

Rufus let go of him and he pulled the band from his hair, handing it to Rufus to allow him to inspect it, his hair falling down his back in sweaty strands. As he said, there was a tiny piece of metal attached to the band and when Rufus peeled it away, he could see the underside blinking to transmit the location. He smashed it against a nearby tree and left it there.

“Clever.”

“Not that clever.”

The most immediate threat dealt with, Rufus sat back down, leaving a little distance between the two of them. D lay down next to him and continued to watch the Turk like a hawk.

“What’s your name?” Rufus asked.

This time, the Turk gave him an answer. “Tseng.”

They stared at each other in silence for a few minutes. Rufus was thankful D had made it out with him, for a number of reasons, but not least of all because otherwise he would have been wary to try and get any rest without the risk of Tseng the Turk trying to take one of his weapons to turn the tables on him. They would need to sleep soon and he felt far safer with D at his side - she was a light sleeper and would wake whether Tseng tried to run or to fight.

For now, Tseng seemed perfectly content to sit there and return his gaze and say nothing at all.

“In the morning, we’ll head out,” Rufus said. “Mideel is southeast of here. It will take us four days if we make a good pace. Five or six if not.”

“Fine,” Tseng replied placidly.

“So you’re just accepting this lot then?”

“This is the situation as it stands,” he said, folding his hands in his lap. “Circumstances may change, but if I want to live, which I suppose I do, then it seems like the best plan of action is to follow you for now.”

“You should try to get some rest,” Rufus offered. He curled up against the earth and used his camping pack as a pillow, D moving quickly against his side, still facing Tseng, never taking her eyes off of him.

Tseng shuffled off of the rocks and sat with his back against a tree. “Where did you get the Shinra hound?”

“My mother stole a litter from a lab she and some of the others infiltrated a few years ago.” At this point, Rufus felt there was no real reason to avoid answering his questions, so long as they fell out of the purview of AVALANCHE secrets. He scratched behind D’s ear, but she was still focused on Tseng.

“It’s small for one that’s fully grown.”

“ _She_ was the runt,” Rufus said. “And she does just fine. If you feel like testing her strength, be my guest.”

“I don’t doubt she’s capable.” Tseng shrugged. “Does she have a name?”

“Dark Nation. I just call her D.”

“Hm,” Tseng observed D for a moment, but wisely didn’t hold her gaze for too long. She would listen to Rufus regardless, but locking eyes with a guard hound was a good way to lose a limb. “She’s well trained.”

“I’ve spent a lot of time with her. She’s also very loyal.”

“Yes, I understand,” Tseng said with an irritated sigh. “Let’s call this what it is. A temporary truce. You have three weapons, materia, and a guard dog. I have no interest in making an attempt against that, so there’s really no need to drive the point home that your dog could rip my throat out if she wanted.”

“A temporary truce,” Rufus laughed. “Should we shake on it?”

Tseng pursed his lips and curled up on the ground, turning his back to Rufus. “No.”

* * *

When Midge signed on with Artie’s eco-terrorist cell, she had envisioned some high-stakes situations: running in guns blazing to overtake a mako reactor, sneaking in late at night to Shinra labs and weapons facilities. While these types of missions undoubtedly did happen, it turned out they were fewer and further between than she would have expected. Instead, once a month she found herself seated at a table in a damp basement with dull fluorescent lighting while a group of twenty or so members of the cell sat around and formulated plans of attack.

In such a rural place, this cell’s primary role was information gathering. This mostly entailed playing the planet’s longest game of telephone trying to funnel accurate information on Shinra movements to other cells. Midge had a number of thoughts about the ramshackle way the cell, and the overarching group, were run, but since she was the newest of the bunch - and had also committed the sin of marrying her husband all those years ago - she didn’t get much say in things.

So she sat, and listened, and bided her time.

By necessity, Rufus attended the meetings with her. She would probably never feel safe leaving him on his own, at least not until he could protect himself. Already, she and Artie had taken turns teaching him how to hold a gun properly, just to get him used to the feeling of a weapon in his hands. It was a horrible thing to have to teach a child, but the reality was he needed to know how to defend himself when the day came that Midge could no longer protect him all the time.

Some of the group members liked Rufus and doted on him, but most of them saw him as a threat - he was still the technical heir to the throne and they knew as well as Midge did that if her husband ever got his hands back on Rufus he would do everything to bend him down that path. The bounties out for both their heads specified clearly enough: President Shinra wanted Midge dead and Rufus returned to him.

“So as you can see, these pictures suggest there’s movement of Shinra troops east of Junon,” the leader of their particular cell, a man named Kal, stood at the head of the table pointing to a board with some blurry images of Shinra infantryman in a field. “Reports from Junon may corroborate this.”

Midge didn’t hide the audible sigh she let out at this.

“Do you have something you’d like to say, _Mrs. Shinra?_ ”

They liked to call her that to try and hurt her, but she had long ago decided to wear her husband’s surname like a badge of honor and had taught Rufus to do the same. There was no one she hated more on the planet than her husband, but the name Shinra was a powerful one and she readily recognized that. Besides, now that she was digging her toes into working with dissidents, she liked to imagine the look on his face if he ever found out one of their members was his estranged wife.

“Yes, I do,” said Midge, who was never afraid to speak her mind. Artie encouraged it, but some of the other members of the group who were otherwise welcoming to her had warned her against speaking up - what with her name and all. “This picture doesn’t tell us shit. We’re just supposed to go based off of some grainy images and a rumor from a city overrun with Shinra loyalists? This isn’t real information. It’s useless hearsay.”

“And what do you suggest exactly?” Kal asked, folding his arms. He exchanged a glance with one of the other members of the group and fixed Midge with a condescending frown.

There were a few men like that in the group and Midge found them intolerable. At home, she and Artie would gripe about them for hours sometimes. She was used to being treated like a pretty little doll who didn’t understand the complexities of a man’s world: her husband had treated her that way their entire marriage - and she had been naive for the first few years. She came from a wealthy and respectable family and she married young, chosen by such a powerful man for her beauty above all else. She had learned about the ugly realities of the world far too quickly living in Shinra Tower.

She knew more than any of the men at that table could have dreamed of knowing about Shinra.

“Screw whatever the leader of the group is saying,” Midge said, pounding her fist against the table. “We should send a small group to Junon and establish contacts there we can trust to keep an eye on things. If Shinra is really moving in on Fort Condor then we need a contact in Junon anyway.”

Artie nodded enthusiastically, but the others murmured amongst themselves.

“And are you going to volunteer?” Kal demanded.

Midge looked to Rufus, who sat between her and Artie reading a book. Rufus was both her greatest strength and her greatest weakness. She felt too afraid to leave him on his own, but she couldn’t drag him along on a mission like that. But would she ever be able to go all in with an anti-Shinra group if she couldn’t trust someone else to take care of him.

She would have to take a leap of faith.

She met Kal’s gaze and nodded. “Yes. I will volunteer.”


	6. Concessions

Tseng was stiff and sore when he awoke the morning after narrowly escaping the dissident camp with his life. It wasn’t the first time he had slept on the hard ground like that, but it had been some time, and he certainly wasn’t getting any younger. As he roused himself, he stretched and cracked his stiff joints, sitting up and leaning against a tree to observe his new travel companion.

Rufus Shinra was still asleep, his guard hound curled in the crook of his legs. His sleep looked fitful, brow furrowed, eyelids fluttering.

Tseng still didn’t really understand why Rufus had chosen to save him the night before. The decision nearly cost him his life, yet he had doubled back and let Tseng out of the cage knowing how precious every second was in that situation. Tseng was grateful, but there was also a twinge of irritation; he lived his life by his own principles and in his eyes having his life saved indebted him to Rufus.

The last thing he wanted was to owe the man it was his job to hunt down.

It would take more than half a week to reach Mideel by Rufus’ estimates and Tseng was hopeful that perhaps the opportunity would arise to save Rufus’ life in some manner - there were plenty of monsters roaming the jungle after all - so that he could be rid of this loathsome burden and do his job.

For now, he waited.

After nearly twenty minutes, Rufus stirred, pushing himself up and rubbing the sleep from his eyes as his dog moved to sit at his side. He looked at Tseng as though he were just remembering that he was there.

“I’m a little surprised you didn’t try to flee,” he said.

“I have no weapons.” Tseng shrugged. “I wouldn’t stand a chance if I ran into a monster out there.”

Rufus dug around in his camping pack and pulled out two strips of what appeared to be some type of jerky. He offered one to Tseng who frowned and shook his head.

“I don’t eat meat.”

Rufus let out a bark of laughter that startled Tseng. “You kill people for a living, but you don’t eat meat?” He tore a piece of the jerky off with his teeth and chewed on it, digging back through his pack and throwing something at Tseng without warning.

Tseng caught it, more than a little alarmed, fumbling with it until he had it in his hands. It was a bar of dried fruit and nuts.

“Sorry, that’s all I have. There should be good fruit to pick along the way, but…if you start getting too weak, you might have to give in and eat some meat. That’s how it is here. You live on what you can kill or forage.”

Tseng chewed on the fruit bar in silence. It wasn’t as terrible as he anticipated.

“D. Go hunt,” Rufus said. The dog stretched and took off into the jungle.

“We’ll head out in a minute,” Rufus said, taking another bite of jerky and then taking a swig from the canteen. “There’s not much in here so the first thing we’ll want to do is find a stream. That won’t be too difficult. There are lots of little rivulets that run around here.”

Tseng said nothing and continued to eat his food.

“My, you’re talkative,” Rufus said loudly.

“What is there to say exactly?” Tseng asked. “We have a goal and unless you need me to assist with something, I don’t know what input you expect from me.”

“We’re going to be stuck together for the next few days,” said Rufus, gathering up his pack and getting to his feet. “It would be nice if the entire time wasn’t spent in silence.”

“Do you routinely get to know your hostages?” Tseng demanded. He would never be this chatty with someone he planned on locking up or killing when they got from point A to point B.

Rufus gave him a withering look. “I don’t routinely take hostages. I leave that to your kind.”

“ _My kind?_ ” Tseng scoffed. “You mean a professional?” He was ashamed that Rufus had gotten a rise out of him, but he was hot and tired and his head still ached from the injuries he had sustained in his fight with Rufus. He could be forgiven for letting his facade crack, if only a little.

Rufus smirked. “Now, Tseng, we both know they didn’t send you to take care of amateurs. They threw plenty of SOLDIERS at us when that was the case. Come on. Talk or don’t, we have to get going.” He took off to the south and Tseng followed behind, leaving a few feet of distance between them.

“You’re leaving your dog behind?”

“She’ll be able to track us just fine,” Rufus said.

Tseng was silent. He disliked the idea of the dog suddenly appearing again. Tseng had never cared for dogs, but he was especially wary around lab-bred Shinra guard hounds.

They walked on through the jungle for roughly half a mile without exchanging a word, and eventually Rufus led them to a stream, where he knelt down to fill his canteen and drink deeply from it. He offered the canteen to Tseng, who gladly took it - he was extremely parched - and watched as Rufus dipped his hands into the water and splashed his face to clean away some of the sweat and ash from the night before.

“I’d kill to find a lake to soak in,” Rufus sighed.

Tseng pulled his long hair off of his neck and tied it back with a spare tie he always kept in his back pocket. Privately, he agreed with Rufus’ sentiment - he would have liked to wash the sweat and dirt from his hair and his body, but for now he settled for wiping his face down as Rufus had. Canteen filled, they set back out to the south.

“So,” Rufus said. “How high up in the ranks are you?”

There was certainly no way Tseng was going to tell him he was the leader of the group - he didn’t want Rufus having that kind of leverage. So he kept quiet and continued walking.

“They’ve never sent a Turk after us before,” Rufus continued, unperturbed by Tseng’s silence.

“We’ve always been assigned to you and your mother, just in different capacities,” Tseng corrected. “You don’t think the SOLDIERS could find you on their own merits, do you?”

“Not a fan of them, I take it?” Rufus laughed.

“They lack subtlety.”

Silence reigned again. They walked for miles, the air oppressively hot and dense, both of them drenched in sweat. Tseng was miserable, but he would never give voice to it. One of the luxuries of being a top-ranking Turk was that he could spend his time between missions in a comfortable bed in an air-conditioned apartment, with any number of vegetarian delivery options in close range. Now he would be eating fruit and nuts for the next week, suffering through this miserable heat while the man he was supposed to bring back to Midgar in chains tried to make pleasant conversation with him.

Around the time they stopped for lunch, the dog returned and assisted Rufus in scaring a group of rabbits from a nest in the brush. Rufus shot a few and the dog caught the rest and then Rufus gathered them up and strung them together with some cord from his pack and hung them on the back of his bag.

“I’ll skin them when we make camp tonight. I don’t want to waste any more time.”

Tseng frowned and said nothing. He understood the necessity of eating meat in such a situation, had no qualms with the dead bodies of the rabbits hanging from Rufus’ bag, but he had been a vegetarian his entire life and the thought of skinning and deboning the little things to eat them made his stomach sour.

After another few miles, Rufus stopped in front of a tall, spindly palm and glanced up at it. “There are some coconuts up there.” He said, pulling a machete from his side. “Do you like coconut?”

It was certainly more appetizing than rabbit.

“Yes.”

Rufus hacked away at the tree and Tseng stood back out of the way as he did so. This was another source of irritation - it was both unnecessary and impractical for him to waste time gathering food for Tseng - he could have just made him eat the rabbit or go hungry. Why was he going out of his way to impart yet another kindness on him? If the roles were reversed, Tseng would not have made such concessions for Rufus.

Mingling with Tseng’s annoyance over Rufus’ apparently altruistic behavior was his frustration with the more basic workings of his brain as he watched Rufus chopping away at the wood. He was slight, but toned, the muscles in his arms flexing as he brought the machete against the tree, sweat beading on his forehead. He wiped a few blonde strands away from his face before returning to his work and Tseng found his eyes following the line of his body as he moved.

Tseng felt neither shame nor embarrassment for finding Rufus Shinra attractive. Even if he hadn’t been ruggedly disheveled, he was handsome in his own right, and besides that, he ticked several of Tseng’s personal boxes, which was unfortunate. The only reason he was bothered by the attraction was that he had a job to do, and it was hardly the time or place for such thoughts anyway.

The palm was thankfully thin and after a few more minutes of chopping, it fell to the ground, netting them three large coconuts, which Rufus shoved into his pack before setting off again.

All along the way, Rufus tried to make conversation and Tseng rebuffed him, not least of all because he wasn’t particularly interested in getting to know what was supposed to be his new assignment. The less he knew about the finer details of Rufus Shinra’s life, the better. And the entire time, Rufus continued to breeze over Tseng’s silence.

He stopped periodically to gather berries and nuts as he noticed plants, and Tseng felt a familiar twinge of irritation at his thoughtfulness.

They didn’t stop until the sun began to set, settling down to make a camp in a small clearing near a stream. Rufus set about the work of skinning the rabbits, his hands quickly smothered in blood. Tseng avoided looking at it, instead picking at the nuts and berries Rufus had gathered.

“I can chop open one of the coconuts when I’m done here,” Rufus said.

“I’m fine,” Tseng replied.

“I’m sorry if it bothers you.”

“Why do you care how I feel about it?” Tseng snapped. “I’m your hostage.”

Rufus glanced sideways at him and rolled his eyes. “So you just don’t treat anyone with respect if they’re your hostage or your target or what have you?”

“You do understand what it is the Turks do, don’t you?”

He sighed. “Yes, unfortunately. But I’ve known Turks. They were good men.” He looked directly at Tseng then and held his gaze with an intensity that momentarily unnerved him. “They just happened to do some bad things in the President’s name.”

That was the very definition of a Turk as far as Tseng was concerned.

“Who did you know?” Tseng asked. “Perhaps I know them.”

“I don’t doubt you do,” Rufus said. He finished skinning the last rabbit and carried them over to the fire he had started when they set up camp, where he began tying them to a thick branch to use as a spit over the fire. Once he had set them to rest across the flames, he walked over to the stream and began scrubbing the blood from his hands.

They were quiet for a moment. Rufus returned to the fire and turned the spit to cook the rabbits evenly. The dog lifted her snout to sniff the cooking meat and Rufus patted her head.

“How did you find us out here?” Rufus asked after several minutes of silence.

“Surveillance drones. We have them all over the planet, but they’re mostly just for keeping stock of Shinra assets. I was in charge of scouting out potential locations insurgents might hide. These jungles span hundreds of miles, like you said. It made sense to send some drones. We almost didn’t find anything.”

“Drones,” Rufus scoffed. “There really is nowhere safe from you people.”

“Would it be so terrible to go home and live comfortably?” Tseng asked, though he already knew the answer.

“Midgar was never my home and it never will be,” Rufus said, though there was no bitterness in his voice. He met Tseng’s gaze with a fierce look in his eyes. “My mother risked her life to keep me safe my entire life. If she hadn’t fled Midgar with me, your people would have killed her and I would have been raised by a man who only ever saw me as an extension of the company: another Shinra asset to be protected.” He turned his gaze back to the fire. “My mother knew that and she risked everything to keep me away from him. So you’ll forgive me if I don’t think being brought back to Midgar in chains is appealing.”

Tseng would never fully understand, but he had seen the evidence of the President’s own shortcomings that made him question his leadership. He could understand why Midge Shinra would have wanted to keep her son out from under such influence. Perhaps the President’s biggest mistake had been trying to kill Midge the first time around.

“Why didn’t your mother wait around for you when the bombs came?” Tseng asked.

“There are others in our group who are weaker and in need of greater help. She knows I can take care of myself.”

Rufus set about opening up one of the coconuts while he watched the spit. Tseng watched him, silhouetted against the firelight. He looked more like the President in that lighting.

“You look remarkably like your father,” Tseng said. “You couldn’t deny your heritage.”

Rufus bristled. “I don’t care to think about it.”

He split the coconut from its outer shell, then cut it in two and handed both halves to Tseng, careful not to spill the water inside. Tseng took them wordlessly and sipped at the pleasantly cool, sweet liquid within. It was the first taste of something refreshing he’d had all day.

Rufus pulled the rabbits from the fire, tossed a few to the dog, and then sat back to eat.

For several minutes they sat there, both of them staring at the fire. Tseng’s feet were sore from walking all day, and he knew they would only get worse as they ventured on. He nibbled at the inside of the coconut in quiet contemplation. When he left Midgar a few days earlier this was hardly how he imagined the mission would play out. He still wasn’t sure what might happen when they reached Mideel either.

Despite a shared distaste for the other’s viewpoint, Tseng found the silence with Rufus was not an uncomfortable one. When they had finished eating, the two of them lay on either side of the fire and watched it burn down to embers, Rufus dog spread between them with her eyes always on Tseng.

“Am I what you expected?” Rufus asked, breaking the silence for the first time in what might easily have been an hour.

“What?” Tseng asked.

“I know my mother and I are infamous with Shinra. We’ve been running for twenty-three years. So did whatever briefing you got for the mission live up to the reality?”

Tseng considered the question. It was true he had spent his entire career with the knowledge that Midge and Rufus Shinra were both top priority targets on their own, as well as leaders of a violent eco-terrorist group. He’d had plenty of briefings over the years about sightings of the two of them, and the damage they had done to Shinra property.

But no, Rufus was not at all what he had anticipated. For one, he was smarter and faster than Tseng had been prepared for. But he had expected some degree of ruthlessness and hatred from a man with such a personal vendetta against Shinra. Instead he was forced to reconcile that image with the reality: a man who had saved his life and spent half the day going out of his way to accommodate Tseng’s dietary needs.

“No,” Tseng answered honestly.

“What did you expect?”

“Someone angrier.” And less kind, but he didn’t concede this last point.

Rufus laughed. “My mother carries that anger so I don’t have to. But I am angry…sometimes.”

Tseng stared at him through the glowing embers of the dying fire and he stared back.

“Get some rest,” he said, rolling onto his back. “We’ve got another long day ahead of us tomorrow.”

* * *

It was one of the hardest things Midge Shinra had ever done to leave Rufus behind when she left for her mission to Junon. She knew he was safe with Artie - and there was frankly no one else she would have trusted to watch him - but the thought that she was heading into certain danger, that there was a very real possibility she might never come back, that was what made it so hard.

It hadn’t been an easy decision for her to commit fully to this plan, but she was fighting her husband and his company for Rufus’ sake. Sacrifices had to be made to make a difference.

Close to three years had passed since Midge had been to Junon, and more than two years since she had been back to the Eastern Continent at all. It was the closest she had been to Midgar since they left and although she would never admit it aloud, it terrified her to be only an hour flight away from the man who had ordered her death.

She had worn a wig and sunglasses to help disguise her identity, dressed in an old outfit from Midgar that allowed her to easily fit in with the upper city elite as she arrived on a charter ship. It had been a long haul to get there, with little help from the members of her cell. She knew they thought she would be unsuccessful at this task - she was bound and determined to prove them wrong.

Before she left, it had been her and Artie who put out feelers for points of contact she could arrange to meet. There was a shared encrypted online chain and someone on the chain claimed to be a double agent working for Shinra. They were interested in establishing contact in Junon, and would be able to provide reliable information about not only military movement, but a number of other Shinra operations.

Midge was rightfully skeptical that it could be a trap. But if it wasn’t, it was worth pursuing. As a little insurance policy, she had her pistol held beneath her coat.

Junon was a beautiful city with a stunning view of the sea, which made the mission a little more tolerable and eased her nerves, if only a little. She came to rest by a bench with a painting of Shinra’s military propaganda mascot, Stamp the Dog - this was where she was meant to meet the contact. The only information she had was that they would approach her and say “Junon is lovely this time of year” to which she was supposed to reply “Not as lovely as Midgar”.

A pleasant, salty breeze floated off the sea as Midge leaned against the barrier wall and watched the sun’s rays reflecting off of the water, gulls floating lazily on the air current, people chattering all around her. After about ten minutes, a figure stood a few feet from her, just at the edge of her periphery.

She waited with bated breath.

“Junon is lovely this time of year,” the man said, and as soon as he spoke, her heart dropped into her stomach and she spun to face him, all sense of self-preservation gone, her carefully constructed veneer thrown away.

“Veld?” She gasped.

And it was him, though he wore a hat and a false moustache to obscure his identity. He stared at her for a moment, and then his mouth fell open and his eyes went wide, glancing around frantically for any danger and drawing closer to her.

“Peggy, what the hell are you doing here?” he whispered.

She couldn’t, or wouldn’t, stop herself from pressing her hands against his face, her eyes welling with tears. “I was the contact. Oh,” she sniffled. “Oh Gods, Veld, are you here to arrest me?”

“Arrest you?” Veld’s brow furrowed. “Did you think it was a trap?”

“Of course I did. I hoped not, but…are you really working as a mole then?”

He looked around and grabbed her arm. “We should continue this conversation somewhere more private.”

So she let him lead her, winding through the busy city streets, to a little inn on the poorer end of the upper city, into a private room where he closed the door and locked it behind him. He pulled his hat and fake moustache off and embraced her in a hug, tugging her tight against his chest with a deep sigh.

“Peggy, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve thought about you.”

She kissed him without hesitating, pleased when he didn’t recoil at her touch. “I missed you more than I can say. I can’t believe you were the contact. What are you doing? Was saving me not enough of a risk? You know what he’ll do to you if-”

“I do. Perhaps better than anyone,” he cut her off. “But after what he asked me to do to you, after what Shinra did to my family, I just…” He clenched and unclenched his fist and turned away to pace by the window. “I had to do something. But what are you doing? Where’s Rufus? How did you come to work with dissidents?”

So they sat down together on the bed and Midge filled him in on all that had happened in the last two years. She spared no detail, not even her relationship with Artie, and Veld listened attentively, occasionally interrupting with questions. He filled her in as well - the President was furious she had escaped and eager to see have her and the boy brought back and it had fallen on the Turks to help orchestrate the hunt, just one of several factors that led Veld to his tipping point. They talked for hours, and then they made love and lay together on the bed in a moment of peacefulness like those they had shared often before everything that had happened in the last two years.

It was bittersweet to know it would come to an end, but there was also a sense of hope. Not only had Midge made contact with the Shinra mole, but it was Veld - which meant she would have a way to reach him again, to see him from time to time.

When they parted ways, he kissed her and said,

“You’ll hear from me soon. I promise.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No matter the universe every Tsengru fic I write is always Tseng going "oh no he's hot" at Rufus.
> 
> I'm working on a big long fic at the moment so this will probably just update kind of whenever I feel like working on this AU, so I can't really promise any schedule, but I have written ahead a few chapters so we'll see. Thank you for reading!


	7. Indebted

Rufus and Tseng had been traveling through the jungle for three days, going at a slower pace than Rufus initially anticipated. Time had to be alloted to hunt and gather food, and more than once they had been forced to go out of their way to find a source of fresh water to refill their canteen. The terrain was rough, with more dense overgrowth than Rufus was accustomed to, and all the while his silent companion provided little in the way of company.

In the Turk’s defense, he had been a little more talkative than the first day, but not much. He didn’t answer the majority of Rufus’ questions, but he would occasionally respond to a line of conversation - typically those not centered around his profession or Shinra as a whole. Rufus supposed it was better than nothing.

He didn’t regret rescuing him, but he also wasn’t sure what to do with him once they reached Mideel. They would have to cross that bridge when they came to it.

Tseng had not made any attempt to steal Rufus’ weapons or otherwise ambush him, and that earned him a mark of respect in Rufus’ book. Of course, it would have been foolish with D’s teeth in between them, but Turks were resourceful and he suspected Tseng could have made a decent effort of it if he had tried.

Halfway through their fourth day in the jungle, they found a lake - the most beautiful sight Rufus had seen in ages.

Both of them were looking worse for the wear after three days trekking through the jungle. Rufus was certain he stank, and he felt filthy, constantly sweating and covered in a layer of grime. Nothing sounded better than taking a long soak in the cool water and scrubbing himself clean.

After as long as they had been traveling, he was past the point of modesty with the stranger sent to hunt him down.

“Let’s take a break,” Rufus suggested, pulling the weapons from his back and removing his clothes without any concern to his impending nudity. “I don’t know about you, but I would kill to scrub some of this grime off of me.” Tseng turned away from him, whether out of respect or embarrassment, he couldn’t say. Rufus left his clothes on the shore and waded into the water completely naked, turning back to face Tseng once he was emerged. “You might consider it yourself. You smell ripe.”

At this, Tseng turned a sharp frown at him.

“I was mostly joking,” Rufus laughed. “But I’m sure we can both admit neither of us probably smells very good right now.”

The water felt like heaven - cool and pleasant against his skin after days of nothing but heat and humidity. Tseng sat down against the shoreline and pulled his shoes and socks off, dipping his toes in the water and visibly contemplating his next move.

“It’s cooler than I would have thought,” he said.

“Hm. It feels nice.”

“You’ve just left me here with all of your weapons,” Tseng pointed out, though D was draped along the shoreline and would have surely moved to attack if he had made any attempt on them. “I could take them and run.”

“If you were going to do that, you wouldn’t have pointed it out to me,” Rufus said. “Or am I wrong?”

To his surprise, Tseng smirked - it was perhaps the first time Rufus had seen him smile - and the look suited him.

“You’re not wrong. But I question how trusting you are.”

“So far you haven’t given me much reason not to trust you.”

“You mean apart from being sent by Shinra?”

Rufus laughed. “A technicality.”

He submerged himself below the waterline to wet his hair and when he emerged again, Tseng was standing with his back to him, slowly peeling his shirt and pants off. Rufus watched in silence. He knew he ought to look away out of politeness but a part of him was eager to see Tseng’s body. _That_ he would blame on two years stuck in the jungle with nothing but his own hand.

Tseng’s shoulders and back were remarkably well-toned and Rufus wasn’t shy about letting his eyes stray across the taut muscles, his pale skin dotted with freckle-like moles similar to the one on his forehead. He allowed himself to look long enough to catch a momentary glimpse of Tseng’s frankly beautiful, muscular ass as his pants slid down to his ankles, then he looked away out of a sense of respect and he heard Tseng step into the water.

Rufus waited until he figured Tseng was submerged to turn around and face him. He had dipped his head beneath the water and his long black hair was now plastered to his head and face, floating around his shoulders in the water. Rufus almost laughed at the sight of it and it suddenly struck him that Tseng reminded him very much of one of aunt Artie’s cats - reticent and unfriendly by all appearances, but it only took the right kind of attention to get them on your good side. As he pushed his hair from his face and his seemingly permanent frown subsided into the slightest hint of a smile, Rufus considered very thoughtfully what kind of attention he would have to give Tseng to replicate that smile.

“It feels good, doesn’t it?” Rufus asked.

“Hm,” Tseng hummed, closing his eyes. “I won’t want to get back out.”

“That’s fine, I can leave you here,” Rufus chuckled. He swam over to the shore and grabbed his clothes, rubbing them against the rocks and soaking them to try and wring some of the sweat out. “Do you want me to soak your clothes?” he called to Tseng.

“What?” Tseng snapped his head up. “No, you don’t have to-”

But Rufus had already grabbed them, dragging them through the water to rinse them. Tseng pursed his lips and made an irritated noise.

“Is there a problem?” Rufus asked. So close to the shore, he was only partially submerged, and he was well aware his body was on display. Nudity had never bothered Rufus much, but he turned his head just slightly to see whether or not Tseng was looking at him.

He was, and he just as quickly looked away, pretending he hadn’t been.

“I don’t see why you need to do that,” Tseng said.

“Again with this,” Rufus sighed. “I think this trip is better served if we help each other out, don’t you?”

He laid the clothes out to dry and draped himself against a rock by the shore, half of his body in the water and half out. Tseng frowned at him and sunk lower into the water until only his face from the nose up was visible. He stayed like that for a few minutes, treading water and looking glum. When he emerged enough to speak, he said,

“So now we have to wait until our clothes are dry?”

“I have spare clothes in my pack,” said Rufus. “Though I’m not sure if my things will fit you. You’re a little more muscular than I am. But I’ll bet you could fit into my pants.”

Rufus was pleased with the way Tseng’s ears went red at this.

“Anyway, I don’t want to waste all day here, but it is nice to relax a little isn’t it?”

“I suppose,” Tseng conceded.

“Do you do that much with your job? Just relax?”

This earned him the same sour look he got whenever he asked about the Turks or Shinra, so he dropped it. It was, he now realized, the equivalent of picking a cat up by the scruff and expecting it to stay when you let it go.

“Well, we’ll stay for another half an hour or so. Then we should head back out.”

“That’s fine.” Tseng turned his back to him and scrubbed his fingers against his scalp, dunking his head below the water and doing it again.

After a while, Rufus peeled himself off of the rock where he lay and got up to dress, pulling a fresh shirt and some pants from his pack and pulling them on. It felt good to be in clean clothes, with a relatively clean body again. Tseng stepped out of the water and Rufus gazed for less than a second on his pale, glistening body before he looked away, offering Tseng a spare pair of his clothes.

The pants fit, though they rose a little high on his calf. The shirt was tight against Tseng’s shoulders, so he opted not to wear it at all, carrying his still slightly damp clothes in a bundle as he followed Rufus on through the jungle toward Mideel. The clean feeling left behind by fresh clothes and a bath was negated almost as soon as they started walking again, but it had been nice while it lasted.

After a while, D took off to hunt where the jungle grew denser. Rufus opted for materia to make his way through, unconcerned with scaring away smaller animals. Their rest stop at the lake had cost them time, and he didn’t really feel like hacking his way through so much overgrowth. Tseng stood behind him, shielding his eyes against the blast of fire quickly put out with some ice materia.

“If we keep on at this pace, we might make it to Mideel by tomorrow evening,” said Rufus, holding a branch up out of the way as he moved.

“And what do you plan on doing with me when we get there?” Tseng asked.

“I haven’t decided yet. But I’m not the only one who gets a say in the decision. You know, I’ll do my best to argue for you,” Rufus told him. “You’re not so bad.”

“I don’t understand how you could say that. You’ve spent your entire life being hunted by Shinra.”

“It’s called understanding nuance. You should try it some time. Or don’t you agree that plenty of people who work for Shinra are just doing their jobs? I don’t claim it’s always a valid excuse, but I don’t really believe most of the people working for the President are truly evil, or even all that greedy. I think they’re simply used to the life Shinra has given them. You don’t strike me as a bad person, Tseng. I think that alone is worth an argument with the others.”

“Be quiet,” Tseng hissed.

“What? Am I annoying you with my-” But before Rufus could finish his sentence, Tseng had his hand clapped over Rufus’ mouth, pulling both of them behind a tree as an enormous coeurl leaped from the overgrowth, teeth glistening as it bared them and let out a low growl.

Rufus’ heart was pounding loudly in his ears as Tseng held him still, his fingers digging so hard into Rufus’ arm that it hurt. He was more frightened at being taken by surprise than anything else really - if Tseng hadn’t been so attentive, Rufus would have been clawed apart by the creature.

It was going to sniff them out, though, and they had limited options for escape. Rufus clawed Tseng’s hand away from his mouth and turned to face them, so close he could feel the heat from Tseng’s breath. “That thing is going to track us easily,” he whispered.

“I _know_ that,” Tseng hissed.

Rufus pulled the hunting rifle from his back. “Do you know how to use one?”

“Of course I do.”

“I’m arming you,” said Rufus, thrusting the gun into Tseng’s hands. “Don’t make me regret it.” Then he grabbed his own shotgun and stepped out from behind the tree, ducking as the coeurl leaped at him. It went flying into the bushes, pivoted quickly and ran at him again.

There was a loud _crack_ in the air as Tseng fired the rifle, narrowly missing the coeurl’s leg, but it was still enough to distract the creature long enough for Rufus to fire off his shotgun into its hind end. It snarled, slowed substantially by the wound, but far angrier than it had been. As it turned, it kicked its good leg back and Rufus had to roll backwards to avoid being hit by the sharp claws protruding from its feet. The coeurl leaped toward Tseng, who fired off another shot, this time hitting it in the shoulder, though it seemed to do little to the massive beast.

Rufus watched as if in slow motion as Tseng attempted to reload the gun while sidestepping, and then the coeurl leaped onto him, tearing its razor-sharp claws against his forearm and causing him to drop the gun. Its teeth were almost around Tseng’s throat when Rufus leaped forward, ripping the machete from its spot at his side and launching himself onto the beast, ramming the knife in between its shoulder blades and wrenching the coeurl off of Tseng at the last second.

The coeurl fell partially on top of Rufus, and Tseng had the presence of mind to grip the rifle with his good arm and fire one final shot into its skull before he slumped back against a nearby tree, his arm bleeding profusely. It took Rufus a moment to free himself from under the creature’s weight and then he stumbled over to Tseng, fumbling with the materia in the bangle at his wrist.

Tseng looked spent. He leaned his head back and closed his eyes, allowing Rufus to kneel down next to him and examine the wounds. The claws had torn open the skin diagonally along the inside of his forearm, deep enough that Rufus wasn’t positive the materia would be enough to fix it. But he still placed his hand against Tseng’s arm and activated the restore materia, watching as a green glow seeped into the wounds and they began to partially stitch themselves back together. Tseng let out a low sigh.

“Could have been worse,” Rufus said, reaching into his pack and grabbing some antiseptic and bandaging. “This will hurt.”

“It already hurts,” Tseng bit back.

As gently as he could, Rufus dabbed the antiseptic onto the remaining wounds and then anchored the bandaging around Tseng’s wrist, winding it up to his elbow and tucking it in to hold it.

Tseng opened his eyes and flexed his fingers as Rufus let go of him. “Are you hurt?” he asked.

“No. A little bruised maybe. Nothing serious.”

“That’s twice now you’ve saved my life,” Tseng said. He looked unhappy about it, his eyebrows creased and his mouth slanting downward in a frown.

Rufus laughed. “If you hadn’t pulled me out of the way, that coeurl would have been on me in seconds. Let’s call this one even.”

Tseng’s frown remained, however. “Thank you for taking care of my arm,” he said, pushing himself back up.

“What was I going to do?” Rufus asked. “Leave you to bleed out.”

“Yes.”

Rufus scoffed and reached for his machete, pressing his foot against the coeurl’s back and wrenching the knife from its back. He wiped the blood against the creature’s fur and secured the knife at his hip once more before gathering his shotgun from the ground and securing it to his back.

“Your rifle,” Tseng offered it back.

“Keep it,” said Rufus. “The jungle is only getting denser. I’d rather you be able to defend yourself.” He stood and faced Tseng, holding his arms out. “If you want to shoot me, then go ahead.”

Tseng cradled the rifle against his chest and stared at Rufus with a furrowed brow.

“That’s what I thought. Are you okay to keep going or should we stop and make camp?”

“I don’t need my arm to walk,” Tseng replied quickly.

So they continued on until nightfall, Rufus making occasional small talk and Tseng responding more often than he had for the last four days, though he was still far quieter than Rufus preferred. D met them just before they stopped to make camp. Tseng attempted to help Rufus make a fire, but he couldn’t carry much with only one good arm, so Rufus told him to sit down and rest.

They ate mostly nuts and berries that evening. Rufus had a bit of jerky that was left, and he didn’t feel up to hunting after wrestling with a coeurl earlier. As they sat on opposite sides of the fire eating, Rufus watch Tseng through the flames and took him in, his hair back in a messy bun at the back of his skull, his gaze directed at the fire, though not focused on anything in particular. He _was_ beautiful to observe. There was a certain dignified composure to him, even sweaty and disheveled.

“Why did you decide to become a Turk?” Rufus asked. It was the first time either of them had said anything since they sat down to eat.

Tseng glanced up and met his gaze. “I came to Midgar to be a SOLDIER,” he chuckled and Rufus enjoyed the sound. “But the former director of the Turks took an interest in me and I ended up on this path.”

So he did know Veld. Rufus considered how he wanted to proceed. For now, it was better if Tseng didn’t know Veld’s ties to Rufus and his mother.

“Clearly you’re good at what you do.”

The smile slid off of Tseng’s face. “The sarcasm is appreciated.”

“I wasn’t being sarcastic!” Rufus protested.

“I was taken hostage by the enemy, almost killed, and then rescued by the enemy to be taken hostage again. What version of this story looks like success on my part?” Tseng demanded.

“You didn’t know what you were contending with.” Rufus shrugged. “It’s different. Everyone underestimates my mother and me.”

“A mistake I won’t make again.” He glowered at Rufus from across the fire.

“If you’re so bent up about it, why don’t you just use that rifle and put me in my place?” Rufus asked. “We could go toe to toe. I’ll bet you could overpower me now. You could shoot my dog and tie me up and force me to go back to Midgar. But you haven’t. You tried to give the gun _back_ to me.” Rufus looked away from him to the fire. “Why?”

“Because you saved my life twice. What kind of man would be I be if I turned around and stabbed you in the back?”

Rufus looked up and found Tseng staring at him with an intensity that unnerved him. He wondered if even his mother would have given Tseng as much leeway as he had in the last few days. She and Rufus knew better than anyone that the evil of the Shinra corporation was not a black and white issue. Veld committed a great number of atrocities during his tenure as leader of the Turks, even after he started working as a double agent, but he still lived by a code of ethics that made him a decent man in Rufus’ eyes.

But Veld also had strict rules about seeing a mission through to its end no matter what - Rufus knew that, he suspected Tseng knew it as well.

As though Tseng were reading his thoughts, he said,

“My mission doesn’t end if we part ways in Mideel. My job is to track you down and bring you back to Midgar. Beyond that the specifics of how I achieve that are left to my discretion. No one will fault me for escaping with my life in this situation…if I’m able to.”

“So we’ll see each other again if I convince my mother to let you go?” Rufus asked, lying down and resting his head on his pack.

“Yes.”

Rufus smiled and closed his eyes. “Something to look forward to then.”

* * *

When Rufus awoke the next morning, a dense fog had moved into the jungle and brought with it a small amount of relief from the heat, though the humidity was still terrible. He sat up and stretched and surveyed the camp. Tseng lay on his side on the other side of the circle and Rufus was surprised to find D curled against him with her head resting gently against his injured arm. When he stood up to get a closer look, he found that Tseng was in fact awake, eyes wide, afraid to move with D against him.

Rufus couldn’t really blame him - D was almost as long as Tseng was stretched out, all muscle, with jaws that could and had crushed windpipes before.

“She was worried about you.” Rufus knelt in front of them and scratched behind D’s ears. She stirred and pressed her head against Rufus’ palm.

“Could you please move her?” Tseng asked, jaw clenched.

“D, up,” Rufus commanded.

At once, she hopped to her feet. He directed her to keep guard at the front of the of the camp. Almost as soon as she was off of him, Tseng sat up and backed himself against a tree, flexing his injured arm with a frown.

“I woke up like that,” he said. “I was afraid if I moved…”

“She wouldn’t hurt you unless I told her to,” Rufus said. “Or unless you tried to hurt me. She must have sensed you were injured. You know,” he glanced back at D, “they’re remarkably intelligent creatures. You should feel honored.”

“Hm,” said Tseng in a way that suggested he didn’t agree at all.

Rufus moved to Tseng’s side. “Let me have a look at your arm.”

Tseng lifted his arm compliantly and allowed Rufus to scoot closer, until their legs brushed, gripping his arm, unwinding the bandaging slowly, and discarding it in a pile beside him. The materia had done good work healing the wounds, but they were still fresh and pink and they would undoubtedly leave scars. Rufus traced his fingers delicately over the marks left behind by the coeurl, holding Tseng’s wrist with one hand as he did so.

Perhaps it was because he was so touch starved, but just the feeling of someone else’s flesh beneath his hands was overwhelming. He had not touched someone like that in two years. Without thinking about what he was doing he brought his hand against Tseng’s neck, brushing his fingertips lightly against the skin, tracing his thumb over his Adam’s apple. His other hand still gripped Tseng’s arm at the elbow and he looked up to find Tseng watching him wordlessly.

“I’m sorry,” Rufus said, though he didn’t let go of him.

“If I didn’t want you to touch me, you would not be touching me,” Tseng replied softly.

Rufus inhaled sharply and considered the statement. It was a remarkably vulnerable position for Tseng to be in - the light pressure of Rufus’ hand could easily give way to something more insistent, but the thought couldn’t have been further from his mind. He held Tseng’s gaze, his thumb still brushing lightly against his neck.

“You have beautiful eyes,” he breathed. And he did. They were a gorgeous, complex golden brown, the richness of the color far clearer this close.

Tseng stared at him. “You do as well.”

Time stretched between them for several seconds and, before he was completely aware of what he was doing, Rufus leaned forward and pressed his lips against Tseng’s, sliding his hand from his neck to his shoulder. Tseng didn’t hesitate to reciprocate, flexing his lips against Rufus’ and reaching up to grip some of his hair in his hands.

It felt impossibly good after two years without that kind of touch. Tseng gripped at the collar of Rufus’ shirt, pulling him closer as they kissed again and again, their mouths opening against each other, their tongues tangling. And then Rufus was on top of him, pressing him against the earth as his thighs gripped Rufus’ hips. For a moment, if only that, it felt almost better than climax - their bodies pressed together, both of them breathing heavily through their noses. Rufus had not realized how much he missed the pleasure of someone else’s touch.

Rufus broke away first, only to trail his mouth along Tseng’s jawline to his neck, nipping at the skin with blunt teeth and pulling a surprised gasp from Tseng’s throat. In a different situation, Rufus would have seen this through to its logical end - he _desperately_ wanted to. Tseng was attractive, but it wasn’t even that - he just wanted to have sex after two years of partially self-imposed celibacy. But there was nothing to be done for it here. Even if he hadn’t been concerned about the hygienic aspects of trying to fuck in the middle of the jungle, there were more practical aspects preventing it.

But he could still enjoy the moment. He brought his lips back against Tseng’s for a few more kisses, more delicate then, their noses brushing. Then he sat back and took a few deep breaths.

Tseng remained with his back against the ground, his arousal evident, though he made no attempt to hide it. Rufus was trying to think away his own erection to limited success. After another second, he stood up and pulled a few fruit bars from his pack, tossing one to Tseng, who had still not moved, and chewing on the other while he pulled his pack on.

“We should go,” he said. “If we make good time, we’ll reach Mideel this evening.”

Tseng pushed himself up and grabbed the hunting rifle, following Rufus without a word.

They did not discuss what happened at all, and apart from some minimal communication about which route to take, they exchanged very few words for the rest of the day. The silence wasn’t tense or uncomfortable, though - there seemed to exist a mutual understanding that what had occurred was enjoyable and didn’t need to be discussed beyond that.

Mideel was not a large city by any means, but it had modern amenities and by the time they drew close to it, the sun was setting and they could see glow of the city lights before they saw the city itself. Rufus had rarely felt so exhausted as when they finally came upon the city. His feet ached, his muscles were sore from days of walking and hacking at overgrowth and hunting small prey, and he hadn’t had a good night’s sleep since they left camp.

He came to a halt at the edge of the jungle where the trees gave way to a dirt path that in turn led to a gravel road into the city. Tseng stood beside him.

“What now?” he asked.

Rufus knew that if he dragged Tseng to wherever his mother and the others were hiding, they would interrogate him and likely kill him - Barret especially would want that outcome. Tseng had been unusual company over the last five days, but company he appreciated nonetheless. He wouldn’t have believed the change of mindset when he first dragged the Turk into camp, but five days in such circumstances could have a profound effect.

He plucked the restore materia from his bangle and pressed it into Tseng’s palm. “Go into the city and call for an evac.”

Tseng stared at him. “What?”

“If I take you back to our group, they’ll probably vote to kill you. I don’t want you to die. So go. And hold onto the gun and the materia in case you run into any trouble.”

Tseng’s brow furrowed. “You’re adding to my debt.”

“Would you rather I let them kill you?” Rufus scoffed.

“Of course not.” He slid the materia into a slot in the rifle. “You understand I still have a job to do. This won’t be the last you see of me.” He fixed him with a stern frown. “We aren’t friends.”

“Oh, Tseng,” Rufus laughed. “I wouldn’t dream of calling you my friend.” He held his chin for a moment, which deepened Tseng’s frown. “But I do look forward to seeing you again.”

To his great surprise, Tseng smirked. Then he backed away, still holding his gaze for a second more before he turned and headed into the city. It felt oddly bittersweet to watch him go, but Rufus decided it was better not to dwell on it. He waited until Tseng was out of sight, and then he followed the path leading into Mideel.

* * *

Once Midge knew about Veld and his status as a double agent, her role as an insurgent dramatically shifted. She didn’t trust the men and women who begrudged her for her name and ran useless meetings out of damp basements to do anything noteworthy with Shinra secrets. So instead, she took matters into her own hands. With Artie’s support, they broke off and started their own group - and they called it AVALANCHE.

They utilized their network of contacts to recruit new members, and though they were easily the smallest of any of the many anti-Shinra insurgent groups running around the planet, they had the benefit of an inside man feeding them information, so they also happened to be the most successful in disrupting Shinra supply lines. For now, that was as much as Midge dared to do. She dreamed of bigger jobs: destroying mako reactors, obtaining state secrets from the network of laboratories Shinra had, _killing the President_. But those would all have to wait until they had the manpower to do so.

And always in the back of her mind, her decisions were made with Veld in mind. It was important to her to protect his identity as the informant - she had not even told Artie who it was. If anything were to happen to him because of her, she would simply never forgive herself.

Most of the others were in it for the right reasons: they wanted to end Shinra’s tyranny and restore the planet to its natural state. Midge couldn’t care less about what the mako reactors were doing to the planet. She had lived in Midgar before and she understood the necessity of energy, however it was obtained. Most of the people who complained about Shinra killing the planet were still utilizing mako energy every day of their lives. If a better way could move them forward, she was all for it, but her grudge lay with the President and the President alone.

If Heidegger was a casualty of it all, that wouldn’t have been any skin off her nose either.

She made no attempts not to poison her son against his father. Sometimes she felt guilty about it, but she knew what kind of man he was and he held no love for Rufus. He wanted an heir to his empire and she would never willingly give him that opportunity back.

So she built her own empire, with the help of two people she cared about most. And she hoped that one day, when he was old enough to make the choice for himself, Rufus would carry on her legacy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> steamy kisses in the jungle ~~ also me writing rufus really is just an outlet for my tseng lust. hopefully you're enjoying this little au. thanks for reading!


	8. Rest

It was Reno who arrived to extract Tseng from Mideel nearly four hours after he called for the evac. He landed the chopper in a field to the east of Mideel and awaited Tseng in the doorway with his typical smirk, offering a hand to help him in before climbing back into the pilot’s seat. Tseng sat in the co-pilot’s chair, resting Rufus’ hunting rifle between his legs and leaning his head back against the headrest. He was _exhausted_.

“Man, boss, we thought you were dead for sure,” Reno greeted him, guiding the helicopter back into the air. “When your tracker stopped moving, Heidegger made the call to send the bombers in. They’ve been making me do your job for the last week and I gotta be honest: not a fan.” He glanced sideways at Tseng. “You look like shit.”

“Well,” Tseng sighed. “I spent five days trekking through the jungle.”

“Where’d you get the gun?”

“I stole it from the camp when I fled.”

“Good thing, huh? You’d probably be dead otherwise.” Reno kept looking over at him. “What the fuck happened to your arm?”

“Coeurl,” said Tseng, looking out the window as Mideel disappeared in the distance.

He was irritable, not least of all because he was so exhausted and had been living off of fruits and nuts for the last five days. But mingling with that was his irritation over leaving Rufus behind in Mideel. It would have been easier to write it off as annoyance with his failure to see the mission through, but he knew that wasn’t it.

It was still the same day, but it felt like another lifetime since Rufus had kissed him that morning. They said nothing about it, and despite every kindness Rufus had shown him, Tseng was still surprised when he let him go once they reached Mideel. He felt like he owed him three times over now for saving his life and sparing him. Worst of all was that the heated kiss they shared kept playing on repeat in the back of his mind, the feeling of Rufus’ teeth grazing against his jaw, his mouth suctioned to his neck.

The heat had been unbearable in the jungle and he was frankly malnourished. There was nothing _wrong_ with what had happened - Rufus was attractive - but there was also no use in dwelling on it. When he got back to Midgar and spent a little time recovering, he would find someone to let out his pent up energy with. In that moment, all he wanted was a hot shower and a decent night’s sleep.

“So. Did they escape?” Reno asked after a prolonged silence.

“Yes.”

“How’d you manage to get out of the camp in one piece then?”

“Rufus Shinra let me go,” Tseng said with a shrug.

“Huh.” Reno scratched the back of his head. “Guess it’s not that surprising that all the garbage the President spouts about him and Midge isn’t totally true.”

“You of all people should know that most of what the President and Heidegger say is nothing but propaganda,” said Tseng. “I’m not claiming anyone in AVALANCHE is someone I’d want to be friends with, but I’m sure they would say the same about us. Nothing is ever truly black and white, is it?”

“Guess not.”

Heidegger awaited them on the roof when they arrived at headquarters, much to Tseng’s chagrin. He greeted them with a curt nod. “Glad to see you survived, Tseng,” he said, in a manner that suggested he was not all that glad about it at all. “The President would like a report on your mission immediately.”

Tseng was nothing if not a professional, so he maintained his outward composure even as he internally imagined slamming the rifle in his hand against Heidegger’s skull until it cracked. He simply nodded politely and followed Heidegger into the President’s office where the President sat behind his desk smoking a cigar and wearing a scowl.

“You can leave,” Heidegger said to Reno.

“Yeah, I’m real torn up about it too,” Reno rolled his eyes and sauntered away to the elevator.

“Insubordinate piece of-” Heidegger muttered under his breath.

Tseng stood before the President’s desk, his hair sweaty and disheveled, no shirt on, wearing pants that were too short on him and shoes that were scuffed and torn, still holding Rufus Shinra’s hunting rifle in his arms.

“Sir.”

“Tell me what happened,” the President demanded, tipping some ashes from the end of his cigar. “Did they escape?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I want a step by step report of what happened.”

So Tseng stood between Heidegger and the President and recounted everything that had happened from the time he entered the jungle until the time the bomb drops occurred. After that, he deviated from the truth - he did tell the President that Rufus freed him from the cage, but after that he lied and said he stole the gun and took off into the jungle to save himself.

Regardless, the truth was that he was confident he could track Midge and Rufus Shinra wherever they went next. That was a promise he made to both the President and himself.

The President was displeased with the report that his ex-wife and son had both escaped, but pleased with Tseng’s resolve to find them. He dismissed Tseng when his report was done and Tseng hurried away, down to the entrance where he took a cab to his apartment in Sector One.

It felt impossibly good to step into a comfortable, climate controlled apartment and shed his filthy clothes. He let the water turn scalding and stood under it for a long time before he set about scrubbing his body clean, shampooing his hair twice and watching as bits of dirt and detritus swirled the drain.

The bathroom was filled with steam when he finally stepped out of the shower, tying his hair into a towel to dry it and standing in front of the mirror, observing the bruises and scrapes across his body and the thin layer of stubble that had grown in after five days without shaving. The gash on his head left behind by Rufus’ gun was close to healed now, but it would leave a scar, as would the wounds inflicted by the coeurl. He glanced down at his arm, tracing his fingers over the claw marks where less than twenty-four hours earlier Rufus had delicately drawn his own fingers across Tseng’s skin.

If not for Rufus Shinra, the coeurl would have crushed Tseng’s throat in its jaws.

He pulled the towel from his hair and combed it out with some effort after days of sitting in a sweaty tangle atop his head, then he walked back into the main room, fell against the bed completely naked, and slept soundly for the first time in days.

* * *

All Rufus wanted to do was wash the sweat and grime from his body, but instead he was stuck in the cramped living room of a house at the edge of Mideel while his mother, Barret, and the others argued about what to do next. They had arrived in Mideel the day before and rented the house under a pseudonym, but they were operating on borrowed time and they all knew it. Mideel would be the next place Shinra would track them to, so they needed to move quickly.

His mother had doted on him for several minutes when he found them, pressing her palms against his face and sizing up his minor injuries, forcing food and water into his hands as she led him to a seat on the couch amongst the others. Rufus ate the food gladly, sharing it with D, who sat at his feet and allowed Marlene to scratch her ears and kiss her face.

Rufus was entirely checked out of the conversation. He didn’t give a shit where they went next as long as it wasn’t this gods damned jungle.

“You been real quiet,” Barret noted after several minutes of arguing.

Rufus chewed on the sandwich his mother had given him. “I don’t have anything to say.”

“First time you haven’t.”

He set his plate down and stood up. “I’m going to shower. If you want my opinion, we should talk to Veld. But I know no one will agree with me.”

With that, he removed himself from the conversation and headed upstairs to the solitary bathroom. He let the water run while he stripped down, leaving his soiled clothes in a pile and stepping beneath the cool water. After days in the oppressive heat, he could have stood there for hours letting the water cool him down. It felt like heaven to scrub himself clean and let the water pulse against his sore muscles.

He leaned against the shower wall for some time while the water pelted down on him, considering the last five days and what was waiting for them wherever they went next. He should have been more concerned about Shinra, especially now that a Turk was on their case, but all he could think about was how good Tseng’s body felt against his and how beautiful he was stepping out of the lake completely naked and glistening.

Even in the midst of mortal danger, there were certain biological needs that overpowered rational thought. It had been so long since Rufus had been physical with anybody and even though he knew that Tseng was dangerous, that their truce had only been temporary, he didn’t care in that moment.

It took no time at all thinking about Tseng, about their tongues tangled together, before Rufus was hard. He slid his hand between his thighs and took hold of himself, stroking slowly from base to tip while he imagined quite vividly how it might feel to have Tseng in front of him on his knees. He pretended it was Tseng’s lips gliding up and down his cock, squeezing just a little harder, halting occasionally at the end of a stroke and gasping softly.

He came with a shuddering moan, rinsing his hand under the water and taking a few deep breaths. It was a release of some of the tension, but he wanted more. Hopefully, wherever they ended up next would be a town with other people and he might at the very least be able to go to a bar and engage in a little good old-fashioned debauchery with someone. He _needed_ to have sex.

After he was done, he toweled off and pulled on a pair of clean, soft flannel pants and returned downstairs to find the group had dispersed. Only his mother and their two dogs remained in the living room.

She looked remarkably tired as she greeted him. “Rufus, I can’t tell you how happy I am that you’re okay. I thought you would reach Mideel before us and when we couldn’t find you…” Her voice caught in her throat. “I don’t know what I would have done.”

“Really, mother,” Rufus said, draping himself across the couch and leaning over to rub D’s belly. “You should know better than anyone that I’m more resilient than that.”

She rolled her eyes. “Always flippant about everything.”

“You should know that the Turk escaped,” Rufus said. He had contemplated not telling her at all, but ultimately he felt that she deserved to know. “I have no doubt he’ll be out looking for us again as soon as he recovers.”

“And how did he escape?” She asked, suddenly very serious.

“I let him go.”

His mother rubbed her brow. “Shiva’s tits, Rufus, what were you thinking?”

“Forgive me, but you raised me to consider the humanity of even our worst enemies. I couldn’t leave him to die. You of all people know there’s no personal vendetta involved with the Turks. He was doing a job.”

“His _job_ is to kill me and take you back to Midgar in chains. It was foolish to let him go.”

“Well it’s done,” Rufus said, turning his back to her. “So there’s no use in chiding me over it. What plan did you and Barret come up with?”

His mother was quiet for a moment before she answered. “He and the others are going to Midgar to work with our cell there. We need a stronger presence there if we’re ever going to make any impact. Shinra wants the two of us more than any of the others. Even without the President’s personal investment they know that we run things. It’s safer for everyone if the two of us stay away from them.”

Rufus was surprised at this news, and turned to face his mother again. “So where will we go?”

She pursed her lips. “I’ll admit when I was wrong. We need to talk to Veld and get his input now that the Turks are after us. So that’s where we’ll go next.”

“Good,” said Rufus. “It’s the right decision.”

His mother stood up and walked over to him, placing her hand on his forehead and brushing some of his hair out of his face. “I love you, my little chocobo.”

“Mother,” he rolled his eyes. “I’m thirty years old.”

She sighed and patted his cheek. “You’ll always be my little chocobo. No matter how old you get.” She stepped back and scratched under D’s chin. “Both of you should get some rest. We’re leaving early in the morning for Reln. I got us tickets on a charter ship.”

Rufus nodded. “Wake me when it’s time to go.”

“Goodnight, darling.” She headed for the stairs.

“Mother?” He called out to her.

“Yes?”

“I love you too.”

* * *

On Rufus’ thirteenth birthday, he asked to be a member of AVALANCHE.

Midge and Artie had been running things from Artie’s home. Reln was a relatively safe place to operate because it was in the middle of nowhere and had no reactor, which meant little Shinra presence. On top of that, Veld had been shielding them from Shinra attention. Midge knew that it wasn’t a long term solution - eventually she would need to leave to protect Artie and Veld both - but for the time being it was important to her that Rufus had a somewhat stable childhood before their lives inevitably went to hell.

It was difficult to juggle raising a child with starting a war against Shinra, but she was doing her best.

“Little man’s getting to be taller than you,” Artie noted.

They had thrown a party for Rufus in the back garden and he had been allowed to invite some of the local boys and girls that he often played with. It was a rare luxury to have people over in their line of work, but it wasn’t every day that Midge’s son became a teenager.

Midge frowned as Rufus kicked a ball around the yard with his friends. “I know. He’s turning into a man. It doesn’t feel like it’s been six years since we left Midgar. It certainly doesn’t feel right that I have a teenager.”

“Well, it’s not like you’re old,” Artie laughed. “You’re only thirty-six. Quite young to have a teenage son if you think about it.”

Artie had just turned forty the month prior and always bore aging remarkably well. Midge wouldn’t have described herself as vain, but it was her beauty that had earned her a place in Shinra Tower, as well as a great deal of attention amongst the socialites of Midgar. She wasn’t ashamed of aging, but she didn’t think she would reach forty quite as gracefully as Artie had.

Forty was still not as scary as the realization that in as many years, her son would be close to a full-grown man.

When the party was over and Rufus’ friends had gone home, Rufus helped Midge and Artie clean up the mess - he was always helpful around the house like that. She rarely had to ask him to do his chores. She knew this came from a life where they had shown each other mutual respect. Above all else, she wanted him to know how to resolve an argument without shouting. Her husband only knew how to yell when he was angry and it left her terrified of him half the time. She didn’t want Rufus to turn out the same way.

“Mom?” Rufus asked as he stood next to her at the sink, drying the dishes she handed him.

“Yes, dear?”

“I want to join AVALANCHE.”

Midge almost shattered the plate in her hand as she dropped it. It clattered against the porcelain sink and she picked it back up quickly. She knew Rufus wasn’t naive about what she and Artie got up to - he had always been an attentive boy anyway. She should have known it was only a matter of time before he asked.

“No,” she said quickly. “You’re too young.”

“I’m not!” He argued, his voice cracking. In the last few months, his voice had begun to drop, and it left him squeaking like that frequently, which always embarrassed him. He tempered his tone before he continued. “I know how to shoot a gun. Why have you and aunt Artie been teaching me how to shoot and how to use materia if you won’t let me join?”

“Rufus.” Midge put the plate down and gripped the edge of the sink. “We taught you that because there will come a day when your father comes after us. And unfortunately, there might be a time when I’m not around to protect you.” She cupped his cheek. “That alone is bad enough. I don’t want you involved with AVALANCHE. Not now. Maybe when you’re older.”

“That’s not fair,” Rufus said, frowning. “I know what they’re doing. Am I supposed to be okay with knowing that my father wants my mother dead? Shouldn’t I get a say in any of this?”

“Rufus, please.” Midge shook her head. “I said no. We can have this conversation in a few years when-”

“What if you’re dead in a few years?” Rufus shouted. And then there were tears in his eyes. He turned his head, ashamed, and Midge grabbed the sides of his face.

“Oh, darling, is that what this is about?” She wiped his tears with her thumb. “Are you frightened of what could happen to me?”

“Of course I am,” Rufus sniffled. “It’s always been just us. I love aunt Artie, but she’s not my mother. Every time you go off on a mission I’m scared you won’t come home. I want to be out there fighting with you, mom.”

Midge sighed heavily and wrapped her arms around Rufus, hugging him against her. “I’m sorry that you worry about me. What about this? You can sit in on our meetings from now on so you know what’s going on. And maybe…maybe…if it’s just an espionage mission, I can bring you along so you can see what it is I get up to. How does that sound?”

Rufus nodded and wiped his nose against the back of his hand. “That sounds good.”

She never wanted this life for him, but it really was inevitable that he would want to be a part of it. Even if she hadn’t been somewhat vocal about all she had been through during her marriage, he had seen first hand what Shinra could do to people who got in their way. She would never fully understand how conflicted he must feel about it all, baring her husband’s name.

“Tomorrow night you can sit in with me and aunt Artie, all right? For now, go up to bed.” She kissed his cheek. “I love you, my little chocobo.”

“I love you too, mom.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel like this fic is my chance to get into Rufus' head since most of my stuff tends to lean a lot more heavily on Tseng's POV. It's also just fun trying to strip Rufus down (hehe) to his most basic attributes and rebuild him since he was raised completely differently in this situation...but at the same time still has the same motivations. Anyway that's all to say I have fun writing this on the side of my larger project and I hope you all have fun reading it. Thanks for reading as always!


	9. Rules of Engagement

Before Tseng went about the meticulous task of tracking Midge and Rufus Shinra’s movements, his first order of business was a discreet visit to the town where his former mentor was living out his retirement in hiding. Veld had been in charge of the Turks for decades before Tseng took over and he was more intimately familiar with their most important case than anyone on the planet. He might not give up the information easily, but Tseng was confident Veld would assist him in some way.

It was dangerous work to visit Veld. A few years prior, Tseng himself had been ordered to kill Veld when he had been deemed no longer useful to the company. Tseng wasn’t privy to the truth of the President’s reasoning for wanting Veld dead, he was just supposed to follow orders without question.

Killing the man who had been his mentor and superior for over a decade was one line Tseng simply couldn’t bring himself to cross. His loyalty had always been more to the Turks than to Shinra, and he respected Veld far more than he would ever respect the President or Heidegger. So he brought his dilemma straight to Veld and they subsequently faked his death and set him up in a quaint home in the countryside town of Reln on the western continent. Whenever Tseng made contact, it was through private, secured lines, and even then he rarely risked it. If the President or Heidegger ever found out Veld was still alive, Tseng would be next on the chopping block.

Privately, Tseng didn’t think Reno would kill him, just as Tseng hadn’t killed Veld, but it was a risk he preferred not to take.

Nearly a week after returning to Midgar, Tseng took a helicopter lacking any clear Shinra markings on the side and flew it across the sea to Reln for the first time since he had secured Veld’s residence there. He arrived in the early hours of the morning and made the walk through town to Veld’s home: a ramshackle little cottage with a variety of plants growing around it and a pleasant garden in the back. From the outside, no one would ever have guessed one of Shinra’s most prolific assassins lived there.

Tseng glanced around, though he knew no one from Shinra would be watching. Reln was of little interest to Shinra because there was almost no mako flowing beneath the ground, which meant it wasn’t a useful location for a reactor and in turn held almost no value whatsoever - this was lucky for the people who lived there.

He knocked on the door and waited, footsteps sounding as Veld approached the door. There was the sound of a chain lock and a deadbolt being undone and then the door swung open.

“Tseng,” Veld greeted him with a smile. “What a pleasant surprise. Come in.”

Tseng hurried in and let Veld lead him into the living room. He had never been inside. Veld had been the one to identify the home as a good hiding place and Tseng had simply done the legwork of getting him to Reln. The inside was cramped, but cozy, filled to the brim with books and records and comfortable furniture that allowed for the ideal life of retirement. Veld deserved it after all he had done for Shinra and the Turks.

“Take a seat. Would you like some tea?” Veld asked, wandering off into the kitchen while Tseng sat awkwardly on a couch that must have been at least thirty years old.

“Tea would be fine,” Tseng said.

It was disconcerting how relaxed Veld seemed, despite the unexpected drop-in. He supposed Veld, of all people, knew exactly when he needed to be concerned about something.

“So what brings you here?” Veld asked from the kitchen down the hall, as though it were an old friend dropping in and not the man who had helped him fake his own death.

“I need some advice with a mission. I know it’s a risk dropping in on you like this, but you know the details of this particular target better than anyone.”

Tseng looked around the cramped living room at the pictures hanging on the walls and set in frames along shelves and on end tables. There was a picture on a nearby bookshelf of Veld with what Tseng assumed were his wife and daughter, both of whom had been killed in a Shinra bomb drop over Kalm. Veld never spoke about it, but Tseng had read the files. Most of the other pictures were art prints and landscapes.

Tseng glanced at a gilded frame on the end table next to him and picked it up, nearly dropping it in surprise when he saw the picture within. It was photograph of Midge and Rufus Shinra: they were both much younger - Rufus looked to be maybe fifteen or sixteen - and Midge had her arm draped around her son’s shoulder, both of them smiling.

Veld walked into the room with two cups of tea and set them down on the table.

“What’s that you’ve got?” He asked. When he realized, he didn’t react with nearly the surprise Tseng was expecting. “Ah. Peggy and Rufus.” He grabbed the frame from Tseng and observed it for a moment before setting it back on the end table. “That must have been…fifteen years ago? Gods I’m getting old.” He sat down in an armchair next to the couch and held his tea, blowing on it to cool it.

“Why do you have a picture of them?” Tseng asked.

Veld laughed. “Oh Gods, I forget there’s so much I never told you. It’s probably better that way, though. You might not have helped save my life if you knew.”

“Are you…friendly with them?” Tseng balked.

“My boy, who do you think got Margaret Shinra out of Midgar?”

Tseng felt like his head was going to explode. “Then…the rumors are true?”

“There are many rumors about me,” Veld responded placidly. He took a sip of his tea. “The truth of the matter is that Peggy and I had an affair many years ago and it was part of why I was tasked with killing her. Instead, I got her out. I spent the better part of my late career funneling Shinra secrets to her.” He paused a beat and watched Tseng’s reaction. Tseng had a number of questions, but he did his best to remain stoic and unaffected at this news. “Does that surprise you, Tseng?”

“You were in charge of that mission,” Tseng said. He was having trouble formulating words. “Are you telling me the whole time you were just shielding them?”

“Have you never broken a rule when you knew the orders weren’t compatible with your own moral code?” Veld quirked an eyebrow.

Tseng considered the question with annoyance. Of course he had. Rufus Shinra should have been back in Midgar under house arrest, but he had saved Tseng’s life three times and Tseng simply couldn’t bring himself to turn him in when he owed that kind of debt.

“I have,” Tseng conceded.

“I did a good job of hiding it, didn’t I?” Veld laughed. “But now I’m retired and enjoying my life out here in the countryside. If I want to have a nice photo of two people that I love dearly, then I will. It’s that simple. Besides,” he smiled at Tseng, “I don’t often have Shinra officials dropping in to visit, and I trust your discretion.”

“Sir,” Tseng said. “I came here to talk to you about them.”

“Ah, so they finally put the Turks on it seriously, did they? Took them long enough. I suppose Peggy’s antics as of late have pushed the President over the edge.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Really, Tseng. You don’t need to call me sir anymore. I’m retired.”

“All the same, sir,” Tseng shrugged.

“Well,” Veld sat back. “What is it you want me to tell you? Peggy and Rufus are admirable adversaries. If you’re going to be in charge of hunting them down, you had better be prepared.”

“I’m aware. I recently dealt with them in the jungles surrounding Mideel. The President wants me to track them, but he hasn’t been specific with how to deal with them beyond his end goal. It leaves…room for interpretation. I’ll admit, I feel conflicted,” he folded his hands in his lap with a sigh, “Rufus Shinra saved my life in the jungle.”

“And you feel you owe him a debt of gratitude.” Veld nodded.

“Yes.”

“I’m afraid I can only be so much help here, Tseng. I have a bias in this situation. But you’re a good man and I know that I taught you well. I’m sure you’ll make the right decision, when it comes down to it. After all, it was my job to track them down for twenty years and I never brought them in, but I still had a job all those years.”

Tseng suddenly understood why the President had wanted Veld taken care of - he had pushed his luck for too long.

“I suppose…I’ll do what I must.” He looked up at Veld. “Sir?”

“Hm?”

“If you’re in contact with them…please don’t mention me.”

“I have no interest in getting caught between Peggy and the rest of Shinra. But I do still offer my help from time to time. There’s no reason to bring you up unless their lives are in imminent danger.” Veld took another sip of his tea. “I hope we understand each other.”

“Of course, sir.”

“In that case, stay a while and let’s catch up. I don’t often get visitors from out of town and I’d love to hear what’s happening back at headquarters…insofar as you’re allowed to say that is.” He smiled.

Tseng picked up his tea and took a sip of it. This was not at all how he had imagined this meeting playing out, but it had been a long flight, and he had already booked a room at the inn in town, so he figured he may as well stay and catch up with his old mentor for a while.

* * *

After nearly a week of travel, Rufus and his mother arrived in Reln via chocobo caravan of all things. The upside had been a pleasant visit with old George the chocobo breeder, but the downside had been the length of time it took them to reach Reln. It was a welcome sight when they stepped off the carriage: Reln had been Rufus’ home for seven years, the longest he had ever lived in one place since. Returning to the quaint countryside town truly felt like coming home.

Veld was living in aunt Artie’s old house and had been for the last three years. He had faked his own death when the President put orders out for him to be terminated, and since then he had been enjoying a quiet and comfortable retirement. Rufus’ mother was always hesitant to reach out to him because of this - it was dangerous for him to be in contact with the two of them, and she felt he deserved to enjoy his old age in peace.

But Rufus knew Veld liked their company and didn’t mind them dropping in, even when it was related to AVALANCHE. He hadn’t seen Veld in two years, and he was looking forward to the visit.

They arrived just after noon with nothing but their dogs and their camp packs in tow. Aunt Artie’s house looked unchanged: the same wild assortment of plants growing all over the front garden, the same chipped purple paint on the doorway. It made him nostalgic to look upon it.

“This was a good home,” he said as his mother knocked on the door. “I miss it.”

“It was,” she agreed. “I’m just glad Shinra never found out about it or it would have been razed looking for evidence of us.”

After a moment, the door swung open to reveal Veld in the doorway, beaming from ear to ear, his eyes glistening.

“Peggy, Rufus!” He greeted them each with a hug, holding onto his mother for far longer. “What on Gaia are you doing here?”

“I’m sorry to drop in so unexpectedly, Veld,” Midge said, “but we had our closest call yet with Shinra and we need your advice.”

“Hm. Well, I seem to be dispensing a lot of advice lately.” He pecked Midge’s cheek. “Come in, come in. I was just getting lunch ready.”

Although most of aunt Artie’s belongings had been replaced with Veld’s the inside of the house still held the same cluttered, cozy charm as it had fifteen years prior. It even smelled the same, and Rufus stood for a moment in the foyer, hit with a wave of memories at the sights and smells of that old cottage. It had been a simpler time, if any time in his life could really be called simple.

Veld set out a tray of sandwiches and a pot of tea and they sat in the living room together eating lunch.

“I can’t tell you how good it is to see you, Peggy,” Veld said with a broad grin. Rufus’ mother smiled back, her face glowing.

“It’s been too long,” she agreed.

Rufus was not naive about their relationship, nor was he naive about his mother’s relationship with aunt Artie. He simply preferred not to think about it. Even after all these years, though, the spark between his mother and Veld was instantaneous and obvious. When they finished eating, Rufus rose to his feet.

“We’ll have plenty of time to talk,” he said. “I’m going to take a walk and let you two catch up.”

“Be safe,” his mother warned, but she didn’t protest his exit, as he knew she wouldn’t.

D followed him to the door and he shook his head. “No. You stay. Too suspicious to have a big hound like you wandering around town.” He patted her head and let himself out, taking only his shotgun and a few materia with him.

Reln was hardly a source of a danger, and a nice walk in the countryside sounded pleasant after a week cramped up on charter ships and chocobo carriages. The sun was bright, but autumn was approaching, so the air was crisp and cool. He would have liked to use the time to take care of his own needs, but there were people he still knew in Reln - it was too close to home - so he would wait until they reached their next destination, whenever and where ever that might be.

As he turned the corner down a side street that he knew led out into a beautiful lavender field to the west, he heard the click of a gun being cocked before it pressed against his back.

“What are you doing here?” A familiar voice sounded from behind him.

Rufus turned around without much concern, placing his hands in his pockets and smirking at the sight of Tseng the Turk standing in front of him with his pistol pointed right at him.

In a finely pressed black suit, his long hair tied back at the sides and falling in a silky curtain down his back, he was even more beautiful than he had been in the jungle. Rufus observed him, eyeing him up and down, taking in every inch of him.

“I could ask you the same,” he said. “How did you track us?”

Tseng ignored his question. “You don’t seem very bothered that I have my gun trained on you.”

“If you were going to shoot me, you would have already. So why don’t you just put it away?”

This earned Rufus a stern frown, but nevertheless Tseng uncocked the gun and placed it back at his hip. The two of them stared at each other wordlessly for several seconds.

“Your hair looks beautiful down like that,” Rufus said.

Tseng’s ears flushed red and his brow furrowed. “Excuse me?”

“Can’t you take a compliment?” Rufus asked, taking a strand of his hair between his fingers. It was as soft as it looked.

“My job is to hunt you, you do understand that, don’t you?” Tseng asked, glancing sideways at Rufus’ hand where it held his hair. It didn’t escape Rufus’ notice that he made no effort to push him away or otherwise stop him.

“I understand. And my job, ostensibly, is to make your life a living hell. Yet here we are having a perfectly cordial conversation. Why don’t we both agree we’re off the clock for the moment?” He took a step closer to Tseng. The kiss they shared had been on his mind more than once over the last week, mostly because it was the most action he’d seen in two years. He felt a little badly about taking out his pent up sexual frustration on Tseng, who seemed a bit flustered by the attention - but not badly enough to stop.

“I’m serious,” Tseng said more firmly. “What are you doing here?”

“I used to live here,” said Rufus. He curled the strand of hair he held around his fingers and moved until he had Tseng backed into the wall.

“And you’re here to see Veld, are you?”

Rufus’ eyes, which had been otherwise preoccupied staring at Tseng’s lips, darted up to meet his gaze. “What do you know about it?”

“Who do you think helped him fake his death?”

“Ah,” Rufus smiled. “So you’re the leader of the operation then.”

Tseng pursed his lips and Rufus was pleased at the visible irritation playing across his face at having let such valuable information slip. He traced Tseng’s cheek with the back of his hand.

“Listen,” Tseng said, “just because I let you kiss me while I was malnourished and overheated in the middle of a jungle doesn’t mean-”

Rufus brushed his nose against Tseng’s. “Do you want to make up excuses or do you want to enjoy yourself for a few minutes?”

To his surprise, Tseng laughed. “A few minutes? That doesn’t sound very promising.”

Rufus responded by shoving him against the wall and bringing their lips together, gripping Tseng’s hair tightly at the base of his skull. Almost immediately, Tseng opened his mouth against Rufus’ and their tongues came together, their kisses rough and greedy as Rufus pressed the line of his body against Tseng’s.

Gods, he wanted nothing more than for Tseng to fuck the life out of him in that moment. But it was also fun to toy with him.

Tseng gripped his shoulder and Rufus let his free hand trail down Tseng’s side to where his pistol sat in its holster. He curled his fingers around it and instantly Tseng’s hand encircled his wrist in a tight grip. Rufus pulled his lips away, leaving barely enough space between them to catch their breath.

“You’re only this close because I’ve let you be,” Tseng whispered. “Don’t push your luck.”

Rufus flexed his fingers until Tseng let go of him. “Tseng,” he breathed, kissing Tseng’s jaw and trailing his mouth down to his neck. Tseng let out a low groan and clutched at Rufus’ shoulder. Rufus held himself against Tseng and brought his lips as close to his ear as he could, “I want to make you feel so good that every time you track me down you feel conflicted about it.” He tugged at Tseng’s hair where he still held it, pleased with the grunt it elicited. “I want you to fuck me so hard that every time we see each other it will be all you can think about.”

“Ah,” Tseng gasped. “Are you always like this or am I special?”

“Maybe a bit of both,” Rufus grinned against his neck as he kissed it. “I also haven’t had sex in two years, so…no offense, but I’m not exactly picky at the moment.”

He slid his hand between Tseng’s legs and gripped him through the fabric of his pants. Tseng’s breath hitched.

“It’s a bad idea,” he said, though he made absolutely no effort to pry Rufus off of him, instead raking his fingers through Rufus’ hair while Rufus kissed his neck.

“Hm, but it would be so fun.” Rufus’ heartbeat throbbed between his legs. “Do you have somewhere we could go?”

“Yes,” the answer was immediate.

With no small amount of difficulty, Rufus took a step away from Tseng. “Take me there.”

“Wait,” Tseng said, his chest rising and falling heavily as he caught his breath. “We need to establish some ground rules.”

Rufus scoffed. “Really? It’s sex. It’s not complicated.”

“Why are you so… _so_ …?” Tseng clenched his fists. “ _My job_ is to bring you back to Midgar. I still have to do my job. The only reason I haven’t yet is because you saved my life. So yes, it’s a little more complicated than two people just having sex, wouldn’t you agree?”

In a moment of rational thought, Rufus would certainly have agreed, but he wasn’t thinking with his brain at the moment, and his body was brimming with anticipation.

“Fine. What are your ‘ground rules’?”

“We both still have our sides we’re working for. If this happens…I give you my word I won’t use the situation to my advantage to bring you in. I want your word that you won’t use it to try and kill or maim me.”

“If I didn’t kill you in the jungle, why the fuck would I do it now?” Rufus asked. He was antsy and beginning to get irritated.

“Just agree to it then!”

“Fine. Anything’s fair game outside of the bedroom, but it’s off limits once we’re naked. All right?”

Tseng smoothed the front of his jacket. “Fine.” He stepped past Rufus and headed down the path into town.

Rufus followed him quickly. His entire body felt like it was vibrating. Tseng was attractive, certainly, and they had good sexual chemistry, which was lucky because at that point Rufus would have fucked almost anybody. That it happened to be someone he actually desired was just an added bonus.

They said nothing as they crossed the town and entered the small inn.

“Your mother won’t worry that you’re gone?”

“She’ll be indisposed for a while. And that’s another rule.”

“What?”

“Don’t fucking mention my mother. Ever.”

“Fine.”

Inside, they climbed the stairs and Tseng unlocked the door to his room, holding it open for Rufus and stepping in after him, locking the door behind him and setting his key on an end table.

“I assume you have the necessary supplies?” Rufus asked. It felt oddly like negotiating a contract.

“Yes,” Tseng shrugged his suit jacket off and began to loosen his tie.

“Don’t. It’s more fun if we undress each other, don’t you think?”

Tseng stared at him for a moment before bridging the gap between them, gripping the back of his neck as they brought their lips together again. They stumbled backward against the bed and Tseng climbed on top of Rufus, his hands moving quickly and efficiently down the line of buttons on Rufus’ shirt and pushing insistently at the fabric until Rufus sat up to remove it. Rufus gripped Tseng’s hips with his knees and rolled, pushing Tseng’s back against the bed and climbing on top of him to remove his tie and shirt as well. This back and forth continued, wrestling with one another for control while their tongues tangled together and their breath came heavy through their noses, until they were both down to just their underwear.

Rufus straddled Tseng’s lap and kissed down his neck while Tseng caught his breath with a few deep gasps. He ground his ass against Tseng’s pelvis, rubbing against his arousal and drawing an almost pained moan from the back of Tseng’s throat as he did so. He kissed across his collarbone and down his chest, pressing his lips against each individual mole freckling Tseng’s skin.

“ _Ah_ ,” Tseng gasped, his hips thrusting lightly to meet Rufus’ movement.

Rufus slid between his legs as his mouth trailed further south, stopping to swirl his tongue around Tseng’s navel until a soft little moan escaped his lips. He gripped at Rufus’ head and pushed with surprising insistence toward the edge of his underwear.

“Do you want something?” Rufus asked, kissing the crease of Tseng’s hip as he hooked his fingers into his boxer-briefs.

Tseng only moaned in response.

“Use your words,” Rufus said, more sternly.

“Your mouth,” he gasped.

Rufus smirked at him. He pressed his lips against Tseng’s erection through the fabric of his underwear and Tseng arched his back to meet his touch. Rufus slid his hand along the path of his kisses, and a shiver ran down his spine as Tseng groaned loudly. He tugged at the underwear and pulled it down Tseng’s legs, allowing him to kick it off while Rufus sat back on his legs and observed the throbbing erection with unadulterated desire.

“I’m done fucking around, Tseng.” He climbed on top of him and kissed him. “Are you going to fuck me or not?”

Another little ‘ _ah_ ’ left his mouth as he leaned over the side of the bed and fumbled through his bag. Rufus sat back to allow him to find what he was looking for, resuming his position straddling Tseng’s lap once he emerged with a bottle of lube. Rufus pressed his chest flat against Tseng’s and kissed his neck, listening as Tseng popped the cap on the lube. A moment later a cool, slick finger pressed against him and slid inside. He pressed his face against Tseng’s shoulder, an unbidden moan escaping his throat as Tseng’s finger curled inside of him until it rubbed against his prostate.

It made him feel like he had been zapped by an electric current, if only for a moment. It had been _so long_ since he felt that. Two years without sex, but it had been longer still since he had been with another man.

Tseng’s finger moved inside of him, stroking repeatedly against that tender spot. Rufus’ heartbeat pulsed painfully between his legs and he moved his hips to meet the thrusts of Tseng’s fingers, his erection pressed between their bodies. A moment more and a second finger slipped inside of him.

“ _Ah…ah,_ enough!” Rufus gasped.

“Use your words,” Tseng echoed Rufus’ previous command, his voice taking on a sudden husky tone that caused a familiar pull at Rufus’ navel.

Rufus kissed Tseng and gripped some of his hair. “I want you to fuck me.”

Tseng withdrew his fingers and squeezed some lube into his hands, stroking himself with it as Rufus positioned his hips backward to meet him. He pressed lightly against Rufus, moving at such a painstakingly slow rate that Rufus was ready to scream. But he appreciated Tseng handling it so sensitively - it _had_ been a long time after all. He slid inside of Rufus and let Rufus set the pace from there. Rufus sat up, pressing his palms against Tseng’s chest and sinking down onto Tseng’s cock until the pain of being stretched open subsided into a jolt of pleasure that rocketed up and down his spine and into his groin.

He moved with slow thrusts of his hips, up off of Tseng and back down with a shuddering gasp. Tseng held Rufus’ hips, his fingers digging into his flesh, moving in time with Rufus, arching his hips up as Rufus slid down. It felt so impossibly good to feel Tseng inside of him - to feel _anyone_ inside of him, skin on skin, sweat beading on both of their bodies. He had needed this so badly and he was just happy Tseng had obliged. This was where he had wanted to take things back in the jungle, but it was so much sweeter for the wait.

Tseng craned his neck, his eyes closed and his mouth open as soft little moans left his throat. He was so beautiful in the throes of passion that it made Rufus ache.

“Fuck,” Rufus groaned, picking up the pace of his movements, pleased when Tseng matched his speed. “ _Oh, Gods…fuck, Tseng. FUCK_!”

“ _Uhn_ ,” Tseng gasped, eyes still squeezed shut. “You talk too much.”

“Yeah,” Rufus slammed down hard against him, drawing a startled gasp out of him. “I’ve been told I’m loud during sex. Does it bother you?”

“I don’t care.” Tseng dragged his nails down Rufus’ back. “Just don’t stop what you’re doing.”

Rufus pressed himself flat against Tseng’s chest and kissed his jaw, allowing Tseng to take control, his fingers squeezing against the flesh of Rufus’ ass as he thrust himself up into him over and over, knocking the breath out of him with each thrust. Rufus gripped some of Tseng’s hair and moaned against his neck.

“Fuck,” he gasped. “I’m so close. _Ah…don’t stop_!”

Tseng didn’t, thrusting harder and faster, letting out a long, low moan. Rufus tugged Tseng’s hair with one hand and curled his fingers around the bedsheets with the other. Tseng’s cock slammed into him again and that was it. A blinding white burst of heat exploded behind his eyes, his body awash with sudden, almost unbearable pleasure. His cock throbbed as he came across Tseng’s chest and his body went limp in Tseng’s grasp. Tseng was still thrusting into him and it was too much now.

“Tseng,” he gasped against his skin. “Too much.”

As soon as he said it, Tseng slid out of him. Rufus lay still while Tseng stroked himself to completion, finishing against his back as they lay pressed together.

The two of them lay against each other, sweaty and sticky, gasping for breath, absolutely delirious with pleasure.

“Gods,” Rufus gasped. “That was…” He couldn’t think straight. His brain was still recovering. “That was incredible.”

“Hm,” Tseng hummed in agreement.

After another moment of lying there recovering, Tseng gently pushed Rufus off of him. Rufus let him do so, sliding onto his side and watching as Tseng got up and stepped into the bathroom to clean up. From where he lay, he could see Tseng at the sink, scrubbing the cum from his chest and stomach, his body glistening with sweat.

When he was finished, he knelt on the bed in front of Rufus and gently scrubbed his chest and back clean. It was surprisingly tender and thoughtful for a man who was technically his enemy.

“We should do this again,” Rufus said. Now that they were finished, he was drowsy with fatigue. He rested his head momentarily against the pillow, but he knew he shouldn’t go to sleep.

“That would be acceptable,” said Tseng, all professionalism again. “But the rules still apply.” He stood up and began to dress, attempting to shake the wrinkles from his pants to little effect. “Outside of this…arrangement, I still have a job to do.” He tucked his shirt into his pants and buttoned it up, tying his tie and pulling his suit jacket back on. “If I run into you…we may have to fight.”

Rufus sat up. “You already know I can handle myself in a fight.”

“I do,” Tseng agreed. “And I still owe you my life.”

“I didn’t save your life so you would owe me,” Rufus bristled.

“No, but the fact remains that I do.” Tseng stood at the edge of the bed and held his gaze. “I’m going to return to Midgar. Now that you and,” he paused, and Rufus knew he was considering his previous request not to mention his mother, “well, now that you’re here, there’s no reason for me to stick around.”

“Tseng,” Rufus grabbed his arm. “Do me one favor. Don’t tell the President about this place.”

Tseng stared at Rufus’ hand where it held his arm. “I would never disclose Veld’s location to him.”

Rufus relaxed. He grabbed Tseng’s tie and yanked him close until the tips of their noses touched, pleased with the gasp it elicited. “Until next time, then.”

“You may not like the outcome next time,” Tseng warned. “I will fight you if it comes down to it.”

“So will I.” Rufus ran his fingers through Tseng’s hair, gripping it abruptly and yanking until Tseng grimaced. “And if you touch a single hair on my mother’s head, I won’t hesitate to gut you.”

Tseng smirked. “I’ll bear that in mind.”

Rufus let him go and lay back on the bed. “As long as we have an understanding.”

“I’m sure we’ll see each other soon,” Tseng said, stepping out the door. “Thank you for the… _pleasant diversion_.”

He closed the door behind him and Rufus waited a few minutes. Then he slipped out of bed, pulled his clothes on, and headed back for Veld’s house, more content than he had been in months.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and here is where this AU turns into pure self-indulgent smut...I mean a lot of it.....like.............a LOT of smut in the coming chapters. this fic is my "smut dump" so I can sustain the slowburn on my other long fic HA. anyway thanks to all who have been reading, hopefully you're enjoying it. more soon!


	10. Twice as Nice

Veld’s advice had been plain: go north to Modeoheim. If Midge and Rufus truly wanted to be safe from Shinra long enough to gather their bearings, there was a safe harbor in the old abandoned town on the Northern continent - a group more militant than AVALANCHE by a long shot, but they would be willing to help fellow insurgents, especially if they mentioned Veld’s name.

But it wasn’t as simple as booking a trip up north. They knew the Turks were on their trail now, and the group in Modeoheim would not take kindly to Midge and Rufus leading Shinra straight to their front door. They would need to lay low for a few months and try to ditch their tail before they could make their escape. Having spent most of their lives doing just that, they were fairly confident in their ability.

Rufus wouldn’t admit he _hoped_ Tseng tracked them down. As long as things stayed at their current threat level, it would be a fun little game of cat and mouse. It would, of course, escalate eventually, but why not have fun until it did? Maybe it was the two year lapse in his sex life or maybe it had really been that good, but the orgasm Tseng had given him had been _earth-shattering_ and he hadn’t really stopped thinking about it since. He was very pleased with their arrangement for the time being.

The first stop they planned was the fucking Gold Saucer of all places. Even though it was a Shinra establishment, it was the absolute last place on the planet Shinra would look for them - they knew from past experience - and it was a good stopping point on the way from Reln to Nibelheim, where they planned to hike through the Nibel mountain range.

A mountain was better than a jungle as far as Rufus was concerned, but it was all relatively miserable to consider. Twenty-three years of living life on the run from Shinra had worn on him, and he was sure it had worn on his mother as well. The thought that this might be the rest of their life just so they could destroy a few reactors and cause a few million gil in damage was a depressing one, but he didn’t voice this to his mother.

At the very least, the Gold Saucer would be a nice diversion after two years in the jungle. He could watch the chocobo races, have a few drinks, maybe even get laid again - these were all promising enough to keep his mind off the future.

They took a day’s ride on a charter bus to North Corel, then took the gondola from the base station up to the bright, gaudy theme park built upon the remnants of Old Corel. It was a good thing Barret wasn’t with them anymore - his life and livelihood had been destroyed to build this place: a shiny front for some of Shinra’s shadier dealings - he harbored plenty of righteous resentment against the very concept of the Gold Saucer because of what it symbolized.

Rufus had been once or twice as a child when his mother figured out how easy it was to hide in plain sight there - he had barely tolerated the garish atmosphere then, he hated it now. But it afforded them time, which was a luxury, so he said nothing as they made their way to the hotel, booked a room under pseudonyms, and settled down for the evening.

“We’ll stay a week,” his mother said. “It gives us time to map out our route and rest. We need to have all our energy for the next leg of this trip.”

“And if the Turks tracked us here?” Rufus asked.

“Then we leave. We can handle a little trouble, can’t we?” She patted Stella’s head. “There are four of them according to Veld. There are four of us, technically.”

“Our dogs are smart,” Rufus laughed, “but I don’t know that they can outwit a Turk.”

His mother settled down against her bed, “You’re right. We shouldn’t underestimate them. But we also need to focus on our own plans. We’ll cross that bridge if and when we come to it.”

Rufus wasn’t really all that worried. He was sure that for now, Tseng was simply tracking them. They were in a good position because Tseng owed Rufus a life debt, whether Rufus really considered it a debt or not. Tseng clearly took it quite seriously, and Rufus was sure it was the only thing currently staying his hand.

So he slept soundly in the knowledge that he was safe, for now, and that he might enjoy a week of debauchery in what was otherwise the worst place on the planet.

* * *

Tseng stared at his computer screen in his office at headquarters, tapping his fingers against the desk as he clicked through the documents. Reno, Rude, and Elena were in their seats at the table, similarly preoccupied with work - or at least, they should have been. Elena was working hard while Reno loudly recounted a recent mission to an exasperated looking Rude.

So far, Rufus had not discovered the tracker Tseng left behind on his shotgun. This surprised him - he was certain Rufus would uncover it almost as soon as he left, but he seemed to have hidden it well considering it had been a rushed job, completed while he bent over to pick his clothes up off the floor. It felt a bit like a breach of their agreement since he _had_ done it while they were still in the bedroom, but he felt he could consider it alright on a technicality.

He clicked out of the documents he had open: Veld’s notes from his years in charge of this mission, which Tseng was now realizing were largely fabricated thanks to his role playing double agent. Behind all of these files, he had his tracking program running, and he stared at the screen while he continued to drum his fingers against the desktop.

What were they doing in the Gold Saucer of all places?

He supposed it really was the last place he would have considered to look for a fugitive of the state.

It had been three days since Tseng had run into Rufus in Reln and he frankly had not stopped thinking about it. When he arrived in Reln that morning, he would never have imagined he would run into Rufus at all, let alone that things would progress as they had. He wasn’t unhappy about what happened - it was nothing if not a practical arrangement. Sure, they were enemies on paper, but there had been an obvious sexual chemistry apparent to both of them when they were stuck in the jungle. Tseng had tried to write it off as a product of the heat, but he couldn’t deny how his body reacted when Rufus pushed him against the wall and kissed him.

Besides, he still owed him his life. If he was going to stall on his duty either way, why not enjoy it?

And he _had_ enjoyed it. Too thoroughly for words. He had never been with someone quite so _vocal_. The husky moans and lewd sounds the came out of Rufus while they were having sex had fueled his fantasies for the last three days, as ashamed as he might be to admit it.

He thought about it for too long and felt a familiar stirring in his groin and just as quickly tried to think about anything else to keep his mind off of it.

“Reno,” he barked. “Don’t you have work to do?”

Reno was still yammering away, and Tseng only felt a little bad for taking out his frustration on him. He _should_ have been doing his job after all.

“I mean, yeah,” Reno shrugged, slouching in his seat. “But it’s not like this paperwork is going anywhere. What crawled up your ass, chief?”

Tseng sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. Reno was a constant source of exasperation: he never followed the dress code, he was constantly back-talking his superiors, and he was months behind on his paperwork. But he was exceptional when it came to field work, which was why he held the position of second in command.

“You understand that it’s still your job?”

Reno scoffed. “Yeah, and?”

Elena’s face flushed as she spoke up. “You know, I kind of agree with the director, Reno. You-”

“Of course you do.” Reno rolled his eyes at her. “You might want to check your nose in the mirror, Laney, there’s a little something brown just here,” he brushed at the tip of his own nose and Elena bristled.

“Excuse me?”

“Enough!” Tseng growled. “Just do your work, please.”

Sometimes his employees could behave like children and it drove him up the wall - and in the end, his mind was right back on Rufus Shinra as soon as the commotion had died down.

The fact of the matter was, he would have to fly into the Gold Saucer and check in on them. It was his _job_ to do so, but it didn’t hurt that he _wanted_ to see Rufus again. The mark of a good Turk was one who needed little direction and took the necessary liberties to get a job done - this was how Tseng justified what he was doing with Rufus, and what he planned to do again.

After a few minutes of relative silence, he stood up.

“I have to track my targets. I may be gone for a few days.”

“Try not to get your ass handed to you again, huh?” Reno raised his eyebrows.

“Yes, thank you for the helpful suggestion, Reno. I trust you can operate efficiently in my absence?” He fixed all of them with a stern frown, but spent the longest targeting Reno with it.

Reno held his hands up defensively, “Hey! I’m a professional!”

Tseng rolled his eyes as he stepped out of the office and made his way up to the landing pad on the roof. It would be a long flight out to the Gold Saucer, and he knew there was no guarantee the Shinras would still be there by the time he arrived, but with the tracker he could at least follow their trail.

All he could think about was Rufus Shinra’s naked body writhing on top of his own.

* * *

The Gold Saucer was a gaudy eye sore ostensibly designed as a family-friendly amusement park built in the middle of an inhospitable desert. It was really a front for drug trafficking and gambling that allowed Shinra to keep its finger on the pulse of that industry while also turning a profit from it. The Gold Saucer even had its own branch of the Honeybee Inn, though access was exclusive and it was well hidden within the park.

Tseng hadn’t often had reason to visit - he had been once shortly after it opened as part of a security sweep to investigate weak spots and help keep the seedier aspects of the park hidden from view. He didn’t enjoy loud, garish places in any capacity and if it hadn’t been for the potential of another roll between the sheets with Rufus Shinra, he would have been miserable about being there.

He wasn’t sure _why_ he couldn’t get it out of his mind. It wasn’t as though it had been ages since he’d been with anyone - he got by just fine when he was home in Midgar. Part of it had to be the danger of the situation, the _forbidden_ element of it all. But part of it, annoyingly, was that Rufus had wormed into his brain after their trek through the jungle and having sex with him had just cemented the space he was occupying in Tseng’s mind.

They would both grow tired of it eventually, but it was nice to enjoy fleeting pleasures while they lasted.

Tseng knew Rufus would not venture around a theme park with his shotgun on his back, so the tracker wouldn’t be much use now that he was inside the park. Instead, he thought about where he might go if he had been away from civilization for two years and quickly settled on the bar overlooking the chocobo tracks. Such a place would have food, entertainment, alcohol, and plenty of attractive young people looking for the same thing.

The inside of the bar smelled like rank beer left behind to stick on the floor for the last several years. Tseng’s shoes encountered resistance from it as he scanned the room and took a seat at the bar. Rufus did not appear to be there, but he would wait around for a few more minutes in case he showed up. The bartender asked for his order, but he wasn’t about to drink on the job, so he simply took a water and used the convex mirror behind the bar to keep an eye out behind him.

Gods but it was loud in there. Dozens of people talking over each other while the sounds of the chocobo race being broadcast blared over the speakers. Tseng sipped his water and grimaced.

“All by yourself? You’re too pretty for that.” A familiar voice sounded to Tseng’s left and he was more than irritated with how his heart fluttered.

Rufus Shinra sidled up on the stool next to him.

“I was wondering when I’d see you,” he said, eyeing Tseng’s water with a frown. “Can’t I get you a drink?”

Tseng scoffed. “I’m not here to drink.”

“What _are_ you here for, Tseng?” Rufus asked, leaning against the bar and resting his head on his hand while he batted his eyelashes at him.

Tseng did his best to remain stern, but his eyes were trained on Rufus’ lips, parted just slightly, the corners turned into a wicked grin.

“It’s my job to track you,” Tseng answered.

“Hm.” Rufus ordered a drink before turning his attention back to Tseng. “And how did you know to find us here, I wonder?”

“A good Turk never divulges his secrets.”

“I’m sure I’ll figure it out on my own. Not worth dwelling on anyway, is it? So what are you going to do with me, hm? Tie me up? Punish me for my crimes against Shinra?”

Tseng found it both charming and annoying how flippant Rufus seemed to be about the entire situation. He knew from their days in the jungle that there was an off switch for this relentlessly flirtatious side of him - he had been quite kind and genuine in many of their moments together, and serious when the situation called for it. Tseng was cautious and quiet in most circumstances, so he always enjoyed someone who was a bit more aggressive about their interest. It was only annoying because it happened to be the one person on the planet he really shouldn’t be fooling around with.

“It sounds like you want me to punish you,” Tseng said with a neutral tone, taking a sip of his water.

Rufus quirked an eyebrow at him and said nothing.

For a moment, they were both silent while they nursed their drinks. Rufus was the first to speak again.

“We had planned to stay here for a week and get our bearings. I would prefer the chance to rest, if it’s all the same to you. We both know you aren’t going to carry me out of here in chains.”

“No,” Tseng agreed. “Right now, I am simply monitoring your movements. How and when I finally… _deal with the problem_ has been left up to my discretion by my superiors. If you want to rest, then rest. Just know that I’ll be here keeping an eye on things.”

“You had better not let my mother see you,” Rufus warned. “She won’t be as forgiving.”

“I’m adept at staying hidden when I don’t want to be seen.”

“Ah,” said Rufus, “So you wanted me to see you.”

Tseng met his gaze wordlessly and his skin jumped as Rufus reached his hand to delicately tuck some of Tseng’s hair behind his ear, leaving his hand there and tracing his fingers down his neck.

“The arrangement we made last time we spoke was agreeable,” Tseng said diplomatically. “I would be amenable to continuing it here.”

“You would be amenable,” Rufus repeated his words, brushing Tseng’s cheek with his thumb. “Do you want to know something?” He asked, his voice taking on a slightly huskier timbre that sent a shiver down Tseng’s spine.

“What?”

“When we got out of that jungle and I finally had a moment to myself…” He leaned in close to Tseng and pressed his lips softly against his ear, “I got hard just thinking about you. And then I touched myself and thought about how nice it would feel to have those lips of yours around my cock.” He dragged his thumb across Tseng’s lip and Tseng inhaled sharply. Another shiver shot down his spine and straight into his groin. “I’ll bet you’re incredible at it, aren’t you, Tseng?”

Despite his best efforts, Tseng’s ears were burning.

Rufus sat back with a satisfied grin and took another sip of his drink. “I assume the Turks have a nicer option than the gaudy tourist-trap hotel I’m stuck in?”

“Yes,” Tseng said, clearing his throat and taking a calming breath. “There is a Shinra executive suite in the tallest pillar overlooking the rest of the park.”

“Perhaps when I’ve finished my drink we can test out my theory…about your lips.”

“Certainly.”

Rufus sipped at his drink at a frankly painstaking pace. Tseng watched him and said nothing - his mind was busy straying to unsavory thoughts as Rufus pressed his lips to the mouth of the bottle.

“So they pay you to be here. Funny, isn’t it? They would probably be pretty angry if they knew just what exactly you were up to,” Rufus said. “But I’m sure you’re adept at hiding it from them.” He set his drink down and pushed back from the bar, running his hand along Tseng’s shoulders. “Care to show me your suite, lover?”

“Need I remind you of the precariousness of your situation?” Tseng scoffed and stood up.

“I know, I know. You could kill me if you wanted to. And I could kill you if I wanted to. But it doesn’t seem like either of us particularly wants that, do we?” Rufus followed Tseng out of the bar and down into an elevator. “Isn’t it more exciting?” He asked. “Knowing either of us could do it, but that we won’t?”

Tseng stared at Rufus from across the elevator. Rufus undid two of the buttons on his shirt and stared back with a playful grin.

Even now, outside of the jungle in clean clothes and more styled hair he looked roguishly disheveled in a way that Tseng found immensely appealing. He closed the distance between them and traced his hand along Rufus’ neck - it _was_ exciting to know they were both at each other’s mercy, that in another scenario Tseng’s hand on his neck might be more insistent out of necessity. Sex with anyone was an act of intimacy in the sense that you became immediately vulnerable on a purely physical level - it was that much more intimate with someone who was meant to be his enemy.

The elevator chimed and Tseng dropped his hand, stepping out and moving down a short hallway to his suite. He unlocked the door and let Rufus enter ahead of him.

“Wow,” Rufus whistled. “This is quite a view.” He stood by the windows and observed the park below them as the sun set along the mountain range to the west.

Tseng shrugged his jacket off and hung it on the back of the door, walking over to where Rufus was and standing behind him. He pressed his lips against Rufus’ neck and ran a hand along his chest where he left it unbuttoned. Rufus sighed and leaned back against him.

“Not wasting time. Good.”

Tseng spun him around and brought their lips together, pushing him back into the window and tugging at the buttons on his shirt until it was all the way open, sliding the flat of his palm over Rufus’ chest and rolling his thumb across his nipple. A little delighted laugh left Rufus’ throat and he nipped at Tseng’s bottom lip playfully.

Foregoing removing Rufus’ shirt, Tseng moved straight to his pants, hastily undoing the button and shoving them down. Rufus stepped out of them with a grin and then the two of them were back against the window, kissing with open mouths, the heat rising between them. Rufus tugged at Tseng’s tie and pulled it off, unbuttoning his shirt and pushing it away from his shoulders. He had his hands on Tseng’s belt when Tseng pushed them away and guided him over to the bed, unwilling to break apart from him for even a second.

They stumbled against the bed and fell back onto it, Tseng climbing on top of Rufus and finally pushing his shirt away from his shoulders to toss it to the floor. Rufus managed to get Tseng’s belt off before Tseng grabbed his wrists and pinned them above his head, holding them tightly against the bed as he trailed his kisses down Rufus’ neck, pleased with the ragged breath that left Rufus’ mouth now that their lips had parted.

“You’re so quiet,” Rufus laughed. “I would never have pegged you to be this aggressive in bed.”

Rufus, by contrast, never shut up.

Tseng said nothing, kissing a path across Rufus’ collarbone and down his chest. He let go of Rufus’ wrists to run his hands over Rufus’ chest, pinching at one of his nipples and drawing a gasp from his throat. He tried to sit up and Tseng pushed him back down, kissing down to his navel, swirling his tongue around it as Rufus had his during their last encounter, running a hand along his erection through the fabric of his underwear and squeezing lightly.

Rufus bucked his hips and groaned. Tseng replaced his hand with his lips, pressing them lightly against the outline of Rufus’ cock and Rufus made an almost pained noise followed by several heavy breaths.

“Shiva’s tits, stop teasing,” he begged.

Tseng slid off the edge of the bed and knelt on the floor, sitting back on his legs. “Come here,” he said.

Rufus sat up and scooted to the edge of the bed and immediately Tseng gripped his underwear and pulled it down his legs, tossing them aside and situating himself between Rufus’ legs, eye-level with his fully erect cock. Rufus looked down at him with heavy-lidded eyes and tugged his thumb against Tseng’s bottom lip.

When Rufus dropped his hand to his side, Tseng leaned forward and pressed his lips as delicately as he could against the base of Rufus’ cock, moving his kisses slowly and purposefully up to the tip. Rufus shuddered beneath his touch and ran a hand through Tseng’s hair, gripping it tightly at the base of his skull and leaning his own head back with a soft moan. Tseng spent a few seconds at this, teasing at what Rufus really wanted until his moans turned into little grunts of frustration.

“Tell me what you want,” Tseng breathed, kissing the inside of Rufus’ thigh.

“I already told you,” Rufus said, an edge to his voice.

Tseng grinned against his skin. “But you didn’t ask nicely.”

“I see how this is,” Rufus laughed. “You want me to beg for it.”

“Hm.” Tseng kissed the base of his cock again.

Without warning, Rufus yanked hard on Tseng’s hair - not hard enough to hurt, but hard enough to get Tseng’s attention. Tseng had had long hair most of his adult life, so he was more than used to men pulling on it in such situations. He looked up at Rufus with a muted expression.

“ _Please_.” Rufus said through clenched teeth, loosening his grip on Tseng’s hair slightly.

“Since you asked so nicely.”

He encircled his lips around Rufus’ cock and took him into his mouth as far as he could, covering what he couldn’t with his hand, pressing his tongue flat along the shaft and swirling it around the head and across the slit with each bob of his head. Rufus let out a satisfied sigh and gently thrust his hips to meet Tseng’s movements.

If there was one thing Tseng prided himself on in the bedroom, it was this ability. He had been told by more than one sexual partner that he was extremely good at it, and as much as he sometimes viewed sex as a simple urge to be sated, he enjoyed it more when his partner was also enjoying it. And Rufus was _certainly_ enjoying it if the noises he was making were any indication - moans that issued from deep in his chest and turned into a groan in his throat as though the pleasure were painful in its intensity.

“ _Ah…Tseng_ ,” he gasped, curling his fingers tighter around Tseng’s hair. “ _Don’t stop._ ”

Tseng complied, moving in a steady rhythm, holding one hand flat against Rufus’ hip to keep him from thrusting too hard into his throat as his movements became less careful the further he succumbed to the pleasure undoubtedly mounting in his body. The sounds Rufus made were rapidly rerouting all of the blood flow in Tseng’s body, his heartbeat throbbing between his legs.

Tseng’s jaw was honestly beginning to ache, so it came as a relief when Rufus’ gasps became more intense and he clutched tightly at Tseng’s hair as he moaned,

“ _Fuck…Tseng, I’m gonna cum_.”

It was not enough warning before he spilled himself in Tseng’s mouth, but Tseng had anticipated as much anyway, swallowing the hot rush and releasing Rufus to sit back on his legs. Rufus fell back against the bed panting, one hand draped across his chest.

“Fuck that was good,” he gasped. “That was the best head I’ve ever gotten in my life.”

“Flattery is ineffective on Turks,” Tseng laughed. He was so hard it was frankly painful, but he stood up slowly, removing the rest of his clothes and draping himself alongside Rufus to wait patiently for his turn.

Rufus lay sideways across the bed with his eyes half closed and he turned his head languidly to Tseng. “Give me a few minutes.”

“Gladly.”

Tseng lay with his head propped up on his hand watching Rufus as he recovered from his orgasm. He wore a contented smile, eyes closed, breathing lightly. His profile was beautiful: the curve of his strong nose, thick golden eyelashes turned down against his cheeks. It really was a shame that outside of that room the two of them were enemies, because Tseng so enjoyed looking at him.

Of course, some of that was probably his throbbing erection thinking.

After a few minutes, Rufus opened his eyes and rolled onto his side to face Tseng, cupping his cheek and bringing their lips together. Tseng returned the kiss perhaps too eagerly, pushing his tongue against Rufus’ mouth until he opened it to meet his. Rufus slid his hand down Tseng’s chest between his legs and took hold of him, stroking him slowly while they kissed.

It wasn’t exactly what Tseng wanted, but he would take what he got.

As though sensing this thought, Rufus nipped at his jaw and said, “Just give me enough time to get hard again.” Then he pressed his lips against Tseng’s neck, sucking so hard Tseng was certain it was going to leave a mark, but he didn’t care.

They lay like that for some time, kissing and rubbing against one another. Eventually Tseng moved between Rufus’ legs and they ground their hips together as they kissed until finally, mercifully, Tseng felt Rufus’ erection pressed against his hip. He couldn’t wait any longer. He grabbed the bottle of lube in his night stand and sat back on his legs.

Rufus lay sprawled on his back, fully erect and wearing a coy grin. “How would you like me, Tseng?” He purred.

“On your hands and knees,” Tseng answered quickly.

Last time had been fun, but he liked having more control - besides that it was easier to keep things casual if they weren’t gazing into each other’s eyes while they were fucking.

Rufus complied readily, rolling onto his stomach and bracing himself on his knees and elbows. Tseng caressed the curve of his ass before slicking up a finger with lube and sliding it inside of him, pleased with the groan that left his mouth as he pressed his face down against the bed. Tseng curled another finger inside and Rufus huffed, his cheeks flushing.

“Hurry up,” he gasped.

“You need to learn some patience.”

Another groan at this. He rolled his hip back to meet the movement of Tseng’s fingers and Tseng withdrew his hand completely. Rufus glanced back at him with a furrowed brow.

“Are you teasing me?”

“No,” Tseng said, squeezing some lube into his hand and stroking himself. “I’m impatient too.”

With that, he sank inside Rufus as slowly as he dared, an unexpected moan rising in his throat as the tight heat clenched around his positively throbbing cock. Rufus inhaled sharply and for a moment they both held completely still, then Rufus rolled his hips and Tseng quickly gripped them, digging his fingers against his skin and thrusting against Rufus’ ass.

A series of gasps left Rufus’ throat with each thrust and he rocked back in time to meet Tseng’s movements.

“Fuck me, that feels so good,” Rufus panted. “Shiva’s tits. _Uhn…don’t stop…ah!_ ”

Gods he was noisy.

Tseng moaned softly, the pleasure quickly mounting between his legs, and all the while Rufus gasped and groaned and shouted all manner of lewd words punctuated frequently with Tseng’s name and requests not to stop. Tseng didn’t mind it, really, but he’d never been with anyone who was so vocal. Every thrust brought a new sound from Rufus lips, and the way he moaned sent a shock of pleasure through Tseng’s body.

His orgasm hit him like a train, every nerve in his body firing at once as his hips lost their rhythm. He let out a stuttering moan and spilled himself inside of Rufus, pulling out quickly and draping himself against Rufus’ back as his breath came ragged. Rufus’ fingers were curled around the sheets and he was breathing just as hard as Tseng was, but he hadn’t finished, so Tseng reached around and gripped him at the base of his cock, stroking slowly and purposefully until a series of escalating moans left Rufus’ mouth and he came into Tseng’s hand.

They lay against each other, bodies covered in sweat, and gave themselves a moment to regain their composure.

As before, Tseng was the first to move off of the bed and clean himself up, offering Rufus a towel as he returned to the bed and lay alongside him. Rufus sat up and pushed a few strands of sweaty hair from his face.

“Two orgasms in one night,” he grinned. “You might not owe me for saving you anymore.”

Tseng pursed his lips. “Flippant as usual, I see.”

Rufus laughed. “I was never serious about it. You’re the one with the supposedly strict moral code.” He slid off of the bed and gathered his clothes off of the floor. “I’m going to be here all week. Should we do this again?”

“Yes.” Tseng’s answer was immediate. It wasn’t professional, but if Tseng was going to play the long game running surveillance on Rufus and his mother, he was going to enjoy it. Both Tseng and Rufus understood the severity of the situation at the end of the day.

“Good. I’ll meet you at the bar in the evenings then,” Rufus said as he began to dress.

“I think we need a few additional ground rules,” said Tseng, draping himself across the bed and watching Rufus dress.

“Whatever you say.” Rufus seemed unconcerned.

“No sleeping over after.”

“Oh, no spooning?” Rufus laughed and rolled his eyes.

Tseng frowned and continued. “No kissing when we’re done if it’s not going to lead to anything.”

“Fine.”

“Good.” They were two lines Tseng felt necessary to draw. It was bad enough they were having sex at all, but begrudging sex between two people who otherwise hated what the other stood for was fine if rules were set ahead of time.

“I have a rule too,” Rufus said. He finished buttoning his shirt and stood by the edge of the bed, running a hand through Tseng’s hair. He was about to shirk him away when Rufus gripped his hair tightly at the base of his skull and jerked his head back.

Tseng gritted his teeth and glared at Rufus. “What the fuck are you doing?”

Rufus brought his face very close to Tseng’s, all the kindness gone from his eyes and replaced with a ferocity that unsettled him. “If you put a tracker on any of my shit again, our next meeting is not going to be so enjoyable. Do I make myself perfectly clear?”

Tseng laughed, which earned him a frown from Rufus. He was pleased Rufus had found it. “I thought maybe I was overestimating you.”

Rufus let him go with a scoff, the smile returning to his face. “You weren’t.” He pulled the tracker from his pocket and set it on the nightstand. “If you’re going to chase me then do it the right way.”

“I can agree to that.”

“As long as we have an understanding.” He headed for the door and paused as he grabbed the handle. “I’ll see you tomorrow night… _lover_.”

* * *

It was difficult enough for Midge to concede to allowing Rufus to attend AVALANCHE meetings and surveillance missions with her and Artie. The day Rufus went on his first real mission - by himself - was the hardest day of Midge’s life. It was easy to risk her life if it meant causing President Shinra even one fraction of the pain he had caused her, but it was something else entirely to risk her son’s life. But he wanted to do it, and after two years of watching from the sidelines, Midge couldn’t refuse him any longer.

Rufus had helped plan the mission: breaking into a small Shinra lab in a town a few hundred miles north of Reln where a team of scientists were creating new types of materia. The purpose was twofold: steal some of the materia to help arm AVALANCHE, and destroy the research to create a setback for the Shinra scientists.

One part of Midge was proud of Rufus for his intellect and initiative toward the mission, but a greater part of her was so anxious that something would happen to him that it left her stomach in knots.

“Relax, he’s a smart kid, he’ll do great,” Artie tried to reassure her.

But she still barely slept for the two nights he was gone on the mission. Rufus was the reason she had fled Midgar with her life - to give him a better one away from his father. She wished she had kept him removed from her desire for revenge, but she had tainted him with it despite her best efforts. She had tried valiantly to keep her true thoughts about his father to herself, but the longer they went away from Midgar, the harder it was to keep to herself.

It wasn’t all her fault, of course. Rufus had made up his own mind after seeing what happened to those who protested Shinra’s reign. A happy and naive populace would ignore the atrocities Shinra committed if it meant continuing to live comfortable lives. Midge wasn’t like Artie and the others - she didn’t really care of her husband was sucking the life out of the planet with mako reactors. She cared that other people were suffering under his thumb as she had suffered. And Rufus felt the same way.

Midge was on the verge of a nervous breakdown when Rufus finally returned. He staggered through the door sporting a thick bandage around his bicep and a scrape on his cheek, a bag held in his hand. He dropped the bag and before he could move Midge had her arms around him, ushering him into the kitchen to tend to his wounds.

“Are you okay? What in hell happened, Rufus? You shouldn’t have gone alone, you-”

“Mom. _Mom!_ ” He pushed her hands away. “I’m fine. Really. I ran into some guard hounds but I took care of them. One of them took a bite, but that’s all. I got the materia and some good notes and destroyed the rest.”

“Oh, Gods,” Midge collapsed into the chair beside him with a sigh. “I was so worried about you.”

“It was never a question that I would succeed,” he said, puffing out his chest. Sometimes the boy was proud to a fault, overly cocky in a way that worried Midge. But he had succeeded. “I learned from the best.”

Midge shook her head. “I appreciate the compliment, but your mother still worries.”

“I’m all right. Really. It was fun, actually!” Rufus grinned. “I want to go with you on your next mission.”

Keeping an eye on him sounded better than a solo mission, so Midge conceded with a nod. “Fine.” She stood up and patted his cheeks. “Now go upstairs and clean up and get to bed.”

“Aw, mom, can’t I-”

“No. You’re still a child and you still have to listen to me from time to time. Now go. We’ll talk about this more tomorrow.”

He got up, still grinning, and shuffled away up the stairs and as she watched him go, she realized that her little boy was very quickly becoming a man.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic is just me seeing how long I can make a porn with plot longfic. so anyway. Thanks for reading!


	11. Turks Two-Step

Rufus and his mother came upon the AVALANCHE cell near Gongaga after two months zig-zagging across the western continent. Once they left the Gold Saucer, they spent a few weeks in the Nibel mountains, cut up to Rocket Town, took a charter plane down to Cosmo Canyon, and took buses and chocobo trails down to meet the members of their cell south of Gongaga. It wasn’t exactly a direct route, but they weren’t going for direct at all. Their goal was to throw Shinra off their trail through unpredictable movements.

The problem was that it wasn’t just brutish SOLIDERS after them now, it was the Turks - and not just any Turk, but the leader of the group. After Rufus’ less than polite request to refrain from using any trackers, Tseng had turned to other methods and they had encountered him at every single location they ran to.

It was almost a routine now. They would arrive somewhere new, a few hours or days would pass, Tseng would show up, and he and Rufus would find somewhere private (or…at least semi-private) to fuck. Sometimes it was whatever inn or hotel Tseng happened to have booked a room at, sometimes it was a less glamorous darkened alleyway or bar bathroom, but every time was just as good as the last time as far as Rufus was concerned.

Maybe it was the forbidden appeal of it all, but Rufus was positive it was some of the best sex he had ever had in his life. If one thing was definite, it was that Tseng certainly gave the best head Rufus had ever received - it never felt equal when he returned it, and how could it when no one on the planet seemed better at it than Tseng? It was almost sick how Rufus looked forward to being found by Tseng because he knew what came next. It was a twisted little game of cat and mouse they were both all too eager to play.

And in between, when Tseng didn’t show up, Rufus found a little time to fool around with strangers in the evenings after he and his mother had finished mapping out plans and sent instructions out to their various cells. But none of the strangers he met in bars held a candle to Tseng.

That thought did worry Rufus, if only a little. They both knew eventually things would come to blows and while Rufus had joked that he wanted Tseng to feel conflicted about it when that happened, he had such an immediate response to Tseng’s touch that he was the one beginning to feel conflicted.

“If we see that Turk around here I’m giving the instruction to shoot him,” Rufus’ mother said as they were led into the Gongagan cell leader’s house.

Tseng didn’t always make his presence obvious. Sometimes, he would meet with Rufus and then disappear and Rufus’ mother was none the wiser. Sometimes he didn’t show up at all, though Rufus suspected he was still keeping an eye on them from somewhere, which put him on edge. Other times Tseng would be very obvious that he was watching them, essentially forcing them to move on to their next location.

This time, however, Rufus had gone out of his way to keep Tseng from following them. In most circumstances, he wanted to be caught because he enjoyed fooling around with Tseng, but this was an important branch of AVALANCHE, responsible for guarding one of AVALANCHE’s largest weapons and materia caches. They had also managed to take down a few Shinra choppers that sometimes swept over Gongaga to check on the burned out remains of an old reactor.

As fun as Tseng was, he was still Rufus’ enemy and Rufus didn’t want to be followed to such a crucial location. So he had taken some artistic liberties to throw Tseng off of his trail for a bit.

“So shoot him,” Rufus feigned disinterest. “He keeps trailing us. But they’ll just send another if you do kill him.”

“We knew it was coming once Veld had to leave,” Midge sighed. “But this one they’ve got after us..." She trailed off with a dark look in her eyes.

They reached the back garden of the cell leader’s house and before Rufus could really take in the pleasant tropical scenery, he found himself pulled into a hug so tight he couldn’t breath, his vision momentarily obscured by a mane of wiry black and grey hair.

“Aunt Artie,” he choked, returning the hug as best he could.

“Kid, you get older every time I see you,” she laughed and tweaked his nose.

It had been almost a decade since Rufus last saw her, though he knew his mother had visited the Gongagan cell more recently and more frequently. Although showing her age, Aunt Artie looked mostly unchanged: still wearing the same eccentric clothes and large round glasses. The corners of her eyes were marked with crow’s feet that Rufus didn’t recall her having before, but it suited her happy demeanor.

“It’s good to see you,” Rufus said.

She ruffled his hair, as she always used to when he was a kid, and turned to greet his mother with a hug and a kiss that made Rufus look away in embarrassment. Much as with Veld, he wasn’t naive about the nature of their relationship, but he preferred to keep it as far from his mind as possible.

Aunt Artie kept her arm slung around his mother’s waist as she turned her attention back to Rufus. “You’ve got to fill me in, little man, I only get bits and pieces from your mom. What’s going on in your life? You seeing anybody?”

“Uh,” Rufus let her pull him down into a chair at the same table she had kept in her back garden all the years they lived with her in Reln. Before he knew what was happening they were all seated at the table and there was a glass of wine in his hand.

“We’ve been in the jungle for the last two years,” his mother answered for him. “Not much in the way of romance out there. Jessie was fond of you,” she said to Rufus, “and she’s a sweet girl.”

“Jessie,” Rufus scoffed. He didn’t elaborate.

Aunt Artie and his mother exchanged a look and his mother shrugged.

“Well, I heard they’re headed for Midgar. Good move.”

“How have things been running here?” Rufus asked.

“Smooth sailing. We took out two Shinra bombers a week ago. They were flying past on the way to Wutai we think. Bastards can’t leave well enough alone. So we blew ‘em up.” She clapped her hands together. “BOOM! Bet they’re pissed now though.”

Although still situated in a tropical jungle, this particular cell had been built up around a small village south of Gongaga and as such had all the modern amenities Rufus had lacked in the jungle they’d lived in outside of Mideel. Aunt Artie had made a comfortable home for herself with the others and while it was a key location for AVALANCHE, from the outside it looked like nothing more than a tidy row of comfortable villas.

Rufus settled back in the chair and sipped his wine. They planned on staying here for a few days to replenish their supplies and restock ammunition, switch out some materia, and head on their way across to the eastern continent. They couldn’t risk staying too long - he kept Tseng off their trail, he was certain, but he would root them out eventually and this was not a stronghold they could afford to give up - but a nice evening of relaxation before they got into the nitty gritty of planning their next move was in order.

“This is nice Artie,” Midge said softly. Aunt Artie’s hand trailed lazily against her back. They were in love, Rufus knew that - they had been for a very long time. He wondered privately sometimes how his mother made it work, loving two people like that. Rufus had never been in love with anyone.

After an hour or so sharing a bottle of wine together, the humidity got to be too much for Rufus and he turned in to give them their privacy.

* * *

On the third day of their stay with aunt Artie, the helicopters and airships arrived. It wasn’t just one chopper signaling an annoying Turk having successfully tracked Rufus down: it was dozens of helicopters and two formidable airships. A sentry posted several miles east had reported their arrival and they swept in guns blazing. The airships dropped a few dozen SOLDIER troops on the ground and they were quickly making their way toward the compound where the weapons and materia caches were held.

Aunt Artie held a high position in AVALANCHE on her own merits and for good reason: as soon as the attack begin she was outside organizing their own troops to meet the SOLDIERS with weapons drawn. In a scene of utter chaos, her voice of reason shouted through: keep them off the cache, reroute the most crucial supplies out with one of AVALANCHE’s own helicopters, and get Midge and Rufus the hell out of there.

Rufus and his mother weren’t so eager to run though. This was _their_ organization. How did it look to flee while others laid down their life for their cause?

Besides, Rufus was so angry at the sudden arrival of so many Shinra officers that he was _hoping_ for a fight. If he caught sight of that long black hair he was going to wrench it from Tseng’s scalp for this.

Rufus left D to fight with Stella and his mother, opting to go his own way toward a helicopter that had landed on a hill to the north. He wound his way through the chaos of the compound, shooting any Shinra officers who got in his way, sparring with one and earning himself a bruised cheek before he managed to disarm the other man. It would have been easier with D at his side, but he was both younger and stronger than his mother - not that she was exactly a lightweight. He still felt better having both dogs with her.

The hill to the chopper was steep and when he reached the top he found…not the Turk he was expecting, but Turks nonetheless. There were two of them, wearing the same finely tailored black suit as Tseng wore, though one of them - a wiry man with a mane of shockingly red hair - had his partially unbuttoned and the other - a bald man in sunglasses - was wearing a neat purple shirt and black tie in place of Tseng’s white and maroon. Rufus crouched down and observed them from the edge of the hill before they could notice him.

“What a shit show,” the redhead said. “They better get what they came for.”

“We should have done this ourselves,” the bald one answered. “All this commotion is a bad idea.”

The redhead shrugged. “The chief said the same thing, but you know how fucking Heidegger is.”

“Hm,” his companion grunted in agreement.

Rufus stood up and fired a warning shot at their feet. The redhead whirled around in alarm and extended a mag rod held in his left hand, pressing the button on the side for a showy display of its potential, electricity crackling up and down the length of it.

“Got ourselves a bold one, partner,” he said.

The other Turk flexed his hands and took a defensive stance.

“Where is your leader?” Rufus demanded, training his shotgun on the redhead. He was small and Rufus knew he could probably take him hand to hand, but there was evidence of lithe muscle beneath his suit. He was likely fast and that combined with the mag rod in his hand made him a bigger threat than the musclehead at his side.

The redhead laughed. “Oh sure, we’ll just walk you right to him. _Idiot_.”

“Reno,” the bald one said. “Do you know who that is?”

“An eco-terrorist that’s about to get his ass kicked?” the one called Reno rolled his eyes.

“That’s Rufus Shinra. Don’t you ever read Tseng’s reports?”

“You know I don’t,” Reno sighed, exasperated. He looked Rufus up and down. “I guess he does kind of look like his old man.”

Rufus fired another warning shot and Reno jumped backward to avoid being hit. “Try it again, pretty boy, you aren’t going to like the consequences.” He warned, holding his mag rod forward.

The next shot Rufus fired was not intended to miss, but Reno was fast and he narrowly avoided a shot to the shoulder, whipping around and attempting to whack Rufus in the back with his mag rod. Rufus ducked and smacked the muzzle of his shotgun against Reno’s forehead, sending him stumbling backward against his companion, who caught him with a look of intense concern.

“Reno! Are you okay?”

Reno touched the wound on his forehead, knitting his eyebrows in irritation. “Help me deal with this shithead, Rude.”

And then they both launched themselves on Rufus and it was only a well placed bolt spell that saved him from a punch directly to the side of the head. He rolled away from them, turned, and fired on Rude who deflected the shot with a protect spell. It was harder to contend with two Turks. Reno was fast, and twice he caught Rufus with his deactivated mag rod, once knocking his feet out from under him and almost shocking him with the rod before Rufus rolled out of the way, and again against the side of the head, momentarily dazing him. Whenever he managed to sidestep Reno’s relentlessly fast attacks, he was met with Rude’s fists flying at his face, parrying each of their blows with the barrel of his gun, firing on them in return, then running to keep from being hit again.

His heart was racing, but there was a certain thrill to fights like these. Yes, if they caught him, it wouldn’t end well for him, but for Rufus an exhilarating fight was on par with good sex: it got his blood pumping and his endorphins flowing in a way nothing else really rivaled. The Turks were nothing if not formidable adversaries.

His slip-up came when he had to reload, he attempted to do so quickly while dodging another punch from Rude only for Reno slam his activated mag rod with full force into his side. The electricity shot through his body and made his muscles convulse, causing him to collapse against the grass and drop his gun. The pain was indescribable in its intensity and all he could do was groan, his jaw clenched from the coursing electricity, his legs and arms shaking. Reno was on top of him then, pinning his arms down and tying them behind his back before gripping him by the hair.

“How’s that feel, pretty boy? You got a little too cocky, didn’t you?”

Behind him, Rude scoffed and rolled his eyes. “Always with the theatrics, Reno.”

“What’s the matter, partner?” Reno laughed, shoving Rufus back against the ground. “Jealous?”

“No,” Rude replied flatly, though his mouth twitched into a grin.

Rufus was powerless to do anything but lie there convulsing in pain. He tried to shout, but all that came out was a low groan of pain. Reno leaned in and whispered something to Rude before reaching his hands between Rude’s legs with absolutely zero discretion. Rude sighed and pried him off.

“Keep your mind on the mission,” he said.

“Yeah, yeah, all right.” Reno tiptoed his fingers along Rude’s shoulder. “I’ll save it for later.” Then he walked over to Rufus and kicked him in the side with the toe of his boot as hard as he could. Rufus groaned, but his muscles were still contracting in painful cramps so that he couldn’t move. “Ah, here comes the chief now.” Reno said, covering his eyes against the sun to observe a chopper approaching from the east.

The pain was fueling the ideas running through Rufus’ head of what he’d like to do to all of the Turks, but to Tseng especially.

After another minute had passed, Rufus’ muscles still twitching and cramping, Reno kicked him again and said,

“We’ve got something for you, chief.”

Tseng stood above Rufus, silhouetted against the sun, and stared down at him with an inscrutable expression. “What is he doing here?”

“I assumed you would know,” Reno shrugged. “Anyway, he won’t be moving anytime soon. What do you want us to do with him?”

“Help the SOLDIERS infiltrate the building and destroy the weapons cache. I’ll deal with this.”

“Whatever you say, boss.” Reno wound his foot back to kick Rufus in the side once more and Tseng held his hand up.

“Enough, Reno.”

“Ah, fine. You comin’ partner?”

Rude nodded and he and Reno took off down the hill toward the compound. Tseng watched them go before climbing on top of Rufus to straddle his chest, gripping his hair at the base of the skull and holding his head up.

“You’re probably in a lot of pain right now,” he said.

Rufus glared at him, or he tried to. He wasn’t really capable of much more than a grimace in the moment. Tseng fingered a piece of materia in his glove and pressed his palm against Rufus’ neck and his muscles relaxed at once. He fell back against the ground with a gasp.

“Get off me,” he spat.

“No. What are you doing here?”

“What do you mean what am I doing here?” Rufus growled. He was struggling against the binds Reno had placed around his wrists. Tseng held himself steady atop his chest, watching him squirm wordlessly.

“You weren’t supposed to be here.”

“Oh is that why there’s an entire fucking fleet here? Shiva’s tits. Get the fuck off of me, Tseng.”

“I’m doing my job.” Tseng’s brow furrowed. “You don’t get to be mad. You understood what was happening from the start.”

Rufus wrenched himself forward and managed to smack his forehead against Tseng’s. It dazed both of them, but it gave him the opening he needed. He rolled out from under Tseng, who was trying to recover from the blow, and struggled to his feet, running off down the hill.

“GET BACK HERE!” Tseng shouted.

It was more than a little difficult for Rufus to run with his hands bound behind his back and his head still ringing from the impact against Tseng’s skull, but he moved as fast as he could toward a line of trees. He struggled to reach the fire materia in the bangle at his wrist, caught it at the last minute to burn away the rope binding him, and almost as soon as it was free Tseng rocketed into his back and the two of them went tumbling into the overgrowth.

Rufus landed on top of Tseng and reeled his fist back, punching him indiscriminately in the face. Tseng grimaced and struggled against him, overpowering him long enough to get the upper hand, his fist making impact with Rufus’ jaw and making his ears ring again. They fought tooth and nail and Rufus considered, if only briefly, that it wasn’t so different than the way they wrestled when removing one another’s clothes in the bedroom.

Tseng managed to pin him to the ground and then his hand was around Rufus’ throat, his knees pressing Rufus’ wrists into the ground.

“Stop _hitting_ me,” Tseng said through clenched teeth. His eye was swollen and already turning a brilliant shade of purple where Rufus had landed his first punch.

Rufus held still then, because he knew Tseng was more than capable of crushing his wind pipe if he squeezed just hard enough. As it was, his thumb was pressed against Rufus’ throat, just barely cutting off his air supply and forcing him to gasp for it.

Leaning down, Tseng settled against Rufus’ hips and brought their faces close together. “I’m going to release the pressure on your throat and you’re going to tell me what you did to make me think you were ten hours west of here sitting around a village in the middle of nowhere.” He let go enough for Rufus to take a deep gulp of air.

“If you thought I was somewhere else then why the fuck are there a dozen Shinra helicopters flying around right now?” He asked when he caught his breath.

Tseng’s hand still held his throat. “You weren’t supposed to be here. We rooted out the location of this cell two weeks ago when they shot down one of our choppers. When I told Heidegger AVALANCHE’s weapons cache was here he ordered a strike. We came to oversee it. You _weren’t_ supposed to be here,” he reiterated.

“Oh, Tseng,” Rufus laughed despite the situation. “You sound worried about me.”

Tseng squeezed harder against Rufus’ throat until his air was almost completely cut off. Unfortunately, Rufus enjoyed being choked on occasion and now that he was beginning to realize Tseng’s presence there had nothing to do with him or his mother, he was less worried about the immediate threat - though he knew a battle was still raging just outside the tree line.

Whether or not he _wanted_ his body to react to his airflow being cut off, it was reacting all the same.

Tseng’s ass still rested on Rufus’ lap and his mouth fell open as he released Rufus’ throat. “Are you… _hard_ right now?” He balked.

“I can’t help what I like,” Rufus shrugged.

Tseng sighed. The two of them stared at each other for a moment before he asked, “How did you fake the video feed on the drones?” He had not moved despite Rufus’ erection now pressed against him.

“Why would I tell you that?” He had done so by stealing a Shinra drone and programming it to his own settings, filming a video of himself and his mother as they stopped in a town on the way to Gongaga, and then editing the video dates and releasing the drone back to Shinra. He would not divulge this information to Tseng.

“You and your mother need to get out of here,” Tseng said. “If the SOLDIERS can’t breach the compound they’re going to pull out and start dropping bombs. This cell has been a huge thorn in Shinra’s side.”

“You _were_ worried about me, weren’t you?”

Tseng held his hand beneath Rufus’ jaw and leaned down until their noses touched. “Not worried. Just eager to repay my debt.”

“Hm,” Rufus wasn’t totally convinced, but as much as he liked to believe he was the most proficient lover on the planet, even he could admit his ass probably wasn’t enough to sway the resolve of a Turk. Instead of fighting him on it though, he grabbed Tseng’s hand and pressed it harder against his throat before leaning up to kiss him.

Tseng responded, as Rufus had hoped, by opening his mouth against Rufus’ and squeezing his fingers lightly against his neck. But the kiss was short lived. He pushed himself off of Rufus and stood up.

“You need to leave.”

Rufus smirked at him and took his offered hand, pulling himself up off the ground. His body and face were aching after the fights he had been through with the Turks.

“I guess that’s one life off your debt then,” he said to Tseng. “I’m sure I’ll see you again soon.”

Tseng pressed his lips into a thin line and said nothing. Rufus didn’t wait for a second command to leave: he had been given this opportunity and now he needed to check in on his mother and aunt Artie and get them out of this mess. So he took off without a second glance back at Tseng.

One or two more mistakes like this and it really would come to blows one day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It is a truth universally acknowledged that Rufus Shinra likes being choked. Anyway...hope you guys are enjoying. I know myself and a lot of other authors have been feeling a little burnt out lately. I can't promise updates on this fic will be as regular as they have been while I devote most of my attention to my other long fic. But I'll try to write more when I can! Thanks for reading!


	12. Still

Tseng sat in the back of a Shinra helicopter as it sped away from the AVALANCHE compound just south of Gongaga. The bomber planes moved in as they were leaving and he watched as explosions lit up the night sky, destroying as much of the compound as possible and setting off a much larger explosion as a bomb hit the materia cache. He shielded his eyes against the light of the blast and looked away.

“Man you look like shit,” Reno glanced back at him from the pilot’s seat.

“Keep your eyes out the window please, Reno,” Tseng replied.

He felt as bad as he looked. Rufus had done a number on him: a welt formed where their skulls had collided, his eye was swollen and tender to the touch, and a long scratch marred his neck where Rufus had dragged his nails across his skin while wrestling for control in the overgrowth.

“Man the president’s gonna be pissed when he finds out about this,” Reno commented.

“I would appreciate your discretion regarding this matter,” Tseng said. “There’s no reason the President needs to know Rufus or Midge Shinra were present during this attack.”

“Whatever you say, boss.” Reno shrugged and added, “Maybe they got caught in the bomb blast.”

The twinge of concern this statement elicited just served to irritate Tseng. He was in a bad enough mood as it was - Rufus wasn’t supposed to be at the compound when they showed up. The fact that Tseng felt conflicted about what he had to do was so thoroughly embarrassing that he couldn’t bring himself to think on it for too long. Rufus Shinra had succeeded in worming his way into his brain and the only way he could console himself over it was to remind himself that, technically, he still owed Rufus his life. When they were even, he could move on and do his job.

And as Rufus pointed out, they were one step closer to even.

The flight back to Midgar was spent in silence except for Reno’s occasional interruptions - he was incapable of staying silent for too long. He mostly chatted to Rude, who responded in one word sentences. Tseng stewed in his irritability. He wasn’t talkative in the best situations, but he was suddenly eager to have a more thorough conversation with Rufus about what the hell they were doing. His job came above all else - it wasn’t acceptable to compromise it like this.

When they reached headquarters, they piled into the elevator and he stepped off on the floor where Heidegger’s office was located, leaving Reno and Rude to go their own way. He heard Reno whisper something to Rude as the elevator doors shut and shook his head. There was nothing that went on in his department that he was unaware of, however discreet they thought they were. Discretion and Reno weren’t two words that often went together anyway, though Tseng was sure he was _trying_. He didn’t really care what they got up to in the privacy of their own homes, but he kept an eye on it. He didn’t need romance complicating their missions.

It was perhaps a hypocritical line of thinking considering that for the past two months all he had done was follow Rufus Shinra around the western continent so he could sleep with him.

Tseng stood outside Heidegger’s door and knocked once.

“Come in,” the gruff reply came quickly.

He stepped inside to find Heidegger behind his desk frowning at a bank of monitors displaying different news pieces and security feeds. He didn’t even look up as Tseng stood in front of his desk.

“Well?” Heidegger asked.

“We encountered enough resistance that we were unable to fully breach the caches, sir,” Tseng reported. “The bombers moved in and neutralized the situation.”

“I want you to find out which of their leaders we managed to kill and which ones got away.”

“Certainly, sir.”

Heidegger finally glanced away from the monitors and looked Tseng up and down. “You look like shit.”

Tseng kept his face carefully neutral and bowed his head. “If that’s all, sir?”

“Fine. I trust you to deal with the issue.”

He showed himself out of the office and made his way back to his apartment. It felt good to peel off his soiled clothes when he got home and clean the grime off of him. When he was done, he stood in front of the mirror examining his injuries. His entire left eye and several inches around it were a deep shade of purple and just brushing his fingers against the skin made him wince. It had been a good punch: fast and well-placed.

In the morning he would return to tracking Rufus down, and next time he would be more meticulous about checking the video IDs from the drone feeds.

* * *

The following morning Tseng typed up his report on the previous days’ events, careful to exclude any mention of Rufus or Midge Shinra, filed the report with Heidegger, and had just opened the feeds for several Shinra drones when his e-mail chimed. He clicked into his inbox and found a new message from an encrypted sender with no subject line.

After pausing a beat to contemplate what the message might contain, Tseng opened it.

“Meet me in Feyra. 1 Week. Room number to follow. -R”

Tseng stared at the message for several seconds, closed it out, and deleted it.

A week later he received a followup message. “Room 204.”

* * *

Feyra was a quaint little town a few miles south of a mako reactor that had been occupied for the last several years by a group of militants attempting to protect a condor that had built its nest atop the reactor. Tseng considered Fort Condor, as the locals called it, to be the most shining example of Heidegger’s incompetence. He had sent troops in waves for months to little effect: that a ragtag group of militants could overpower the Shinra military was an embarrassment. If the Turks had been put on the mission the condor would be dead and Shinra would occupy the reactor again, but since no one had ever asked for his input, he would leave Heidegger to waste resources on it.

It was dangerous to approach a town so close to Fort Condor in a Shinra-issue vehicle, so Tseng landed several miles south and walked the rest of the way, arriving in the town just after sunset and making his way to the inn with his hand hovering over his pistol. He didn’t entirely trust it not to be an ambush after what Shinra had done to AVALANCHE a week earlier. As much fun as he could have with Rufus, they were still enemies at the end of the day.

He made his way up to room 204 and knocked lightly. After a few seconds, the door opened to reveal Rufus, as Tseng expected, but there didn’t appear to be any ambush waiting. Rufus still bore the marks of their fight just as Tseng did: a purple bruise beginning to fade to yellow on his jaw, a cut at his brow line, and another on his cheek. He stepped away from the door wordlessly and let Tseng in, closing and locking the door behind him.

“You look rough,” Tseng greeted him.

“Yeah? You should see the other guy,” Rufus smirked.

Tseng took a seat in a chair in the corner, pointedly avoiding the bed at the center of the room. Rufus sat on the edge of the bed and stared at him.

“We need to have a chat,” he said.

Tseng nodded. “So talk.”

“Things are going to escalate after what you did in Gongaga.”

“ _I_ did nothing. I was following orders. Your father-”

“Don’t call him that.”

“The President ordered the strike. I trust your people made it out in time?”

“Not all of them,” Rufus pursed his lips. “But at least my mother and our leaders.”

“What am I supposed to say exactly?” Tseng held his hands out in front of him. “I showed up in the jungle to kill your mother and take you hostage. At the end of the day that’s still my mission. You knew that when you freed me from the cage. You knew it when you kept me alive for five days in the jungle. And you’ve known it every single time you let me fuck you.”

Rufus was silent for a moment.

“If you try to hurt her, you know that I’ll have to kill you.”

“You can certainly try.”

“Shiva’s tits, Tseng,” Rufus hissed.

“I still owe you,” Tseng offered. “That’s the only thing staying my hand.”

Rufus met his gaze and the intensity with which he looked at him made Tseng’s stomach clench. This was how it was and how it would be. There was an electric tension between them whether either of them liked it or not. He wanted simultaneously to choke the life out of Rufus and to fuck him to the edge of his limits and he knew Rufus felt the same way about it. There wasn’t even hatred, which Tseng personally felt would have made the situation more bearable. Outside of his mission, Tseng didn’t care what Rufus Shinra did with AVALANCHE. He was neutral about most situations - he simply carried out Shinra’s orders.

“Surprised you arranged such a surreptitious meeting after our last encounter,” Tseng said.

“I wanted to talk in private. The others think I’m doing a surveillance run.”

“Clever.”

“I am, occasionally.” Rufus smirked.

“Often,” Tseng corrected. And he was, usually to Tseng’s chagrin, though he preferred a smart opponent like Rufus who made him work for a win.

Rufus rose from the bed and crossed the room in a few long strides, standing in front of Tseng and leaning over him. “You raised the stakes last week.”

Tseng looked up at him. “And?”

“Do you still want to do this, knowing it’s just going to get worse?” Rufus moved closer, brushing his nose against Tseng’s.

Tseng responded by gripping his waist and pulling him onto his lap. He didn’t, and had never, cared about the repercussions. It was just sex. And in fact, it was such good sex that it felt wrong to stop just because they might kill each other one day.

Rufus straddled his lap and brought their lips together, grinding against him as they kissed, gripping the back of his neck with one hand and a fistful of hair with his other. Tseng kissed along his jaw and he pulled back with a wince.

“Oh,” Tseng breathed against him. He traced his fingers lightly against the bruise on Rufus’ jaw. “I’m sorry.”

Rufus brushed his fingers against Tseng’s black eye wordlessly and he let him, his eye twinging at the mild pain his touch caused.

The moment was far too tender for Tseng’s liking. He gripped Rufus’ shirt and ripped it open, popping a few of the buttons off in his haste and drawing a startled gasp from Rufus’ throat as he glued his mouth to his clavicle.

After two months of such regular sex with Rufus, Tseng had become more intimately familiar with his body than he ever imagined he would be. As a whole, Rufus was a beautiful sight to behold, but there were parts of him that Tseng had become especially fond of. His chest and arms had their share of scars and Tseng paid particular attention to them with his mouth, but he also liked the pale freckles dotting his arms and the pronounced veins along the inside of his forearms.

The more skin he uncovered as they undressed, the more attention he gave to his favorite spots, kissing along a scar on Rufus’ chest and running his tongue against Rufus’ nipple. Rufus was vocal in all of his responses, ardent in his praise, punctuating every touch and kiss with husky moans. Tseng had never cared much for vocal theatrics in the bedroom, but it never felt like Rufus was putting it on for show. It had reached the point where Tseng’s body could react to Rufus’ voice without a single touch between them.

Their clothes were quickly discarded on the floor, the two of them grinding against each other, careful to avoid their bruises as they kissed. Tseng let his hands stray down the line of Rufus’ spine to slide over the curve of his ass: another of Tseng’s favorite parts of Rufus. He wanted to be able to take it in completely.

“Rufus,” Tseng gasped, kissing his Adam’s apple. “Get on the bed.”

Rufus fixed him with a grin and slid off of his lap. “How do you want me, lover?”

Tseng rolled his eyes. It was an annoying term, but it didn’t sound so terrible coming from Rufus’ mouth. When Tseng didn’t answer, he lay down on his stomach, arching his back just slightly and allowing Tseng a view of his perfectly sculpted ass. He knelt next to him on the bed and leaned down, running his hands over Rufus’ ass and spreading his legs.

“Hand me the lube.”

Rufus complied and Tseng slicked his fingers with it, sliding them inside of Rufus and watching his eyes squeeze shut and his mouth fall open as Tseng’s fingers curled inward.

“Fuck,” he huffed.

As much as Tseng loved looking at Rufus’ ass, fucking him from behind was far from his favorite position. So after a few minutes of sliding his fingers in and out of him, he pulled his hand back and laid down next to Rufus and, without saying anything, Rufus climbed on top of him.

It was a pleasure to grip Rufus’ hips and watch him move, moaning and throwing his head back as he rocked his hips back and forth. There was something oddly titillating too, knowing what they were capable of doing to each other - the bruises on their faces evidence of that - but instead only giving each other this pleasure.

“Tseng, fuck!” Rufus gasped, pressing his palms hard against Tseng’s chest. “Gods, fuck! You feel so good.”

Tseng usually kept quiet, mostly because he found it embarrassing to talk very much during sex, but something made him respond to Rufus’ ardent moaning.

“Tell me,” he said in a husky voice. “How good?”

Rufus let out a low groan and came across his chest, falling against him and clutching at his shoulder while Tseng finished.

They lay panting for a few seconds and then Tseng, as usual, initiated the cleanup. Afterward, Rufus lay draped across the bed while Tseng gathered his clothes from the floor.

“You don’t have to leave right away,” Rufus said. His skin glowed from his perspiration. Tseng stood with his pants clutched in his his hand and stared at him.

“We have rules.”

“I’m not asking you to stay the night,” Rufus corrected. “I’m just saying you don’t have to leave right away.” He slid off the bed and crossed over to a minibar against the wall. Tseng stood stock still in the middle of the room and stared at Rufus’ backside as he poured himself a drink. “Do you want something?”

He made a snap decision. “I’ll have some whiskey.” He set his clothes back down and took a seat in the chair by the wall, careful to watch Rufus as he poured the drink.

“Ah,” said Rufus, “a man after my own heart.” Ice clinked in glass as Rufus prepared the drinks. He handed Tseng his whiskey and sat down on the edge of the bed to drink his own.

This was dangerous. It didn’t technically violate the rules they had set, but it felt like toeing the line as far as Tseng was concerned.

“So I suppose you answered my question,” Rufus said, watching his glass as he swirled his drink around. “This is going to continue? Even after what happened?”

“I assumed it would be your call,” said Tseng. “What happened in Gongaga was no skin off my nose. I assumed you would still be angry, though.”

“I am, a little.” Rufus shrugged and sipped his drink. “Not as angry as the others are. It was a shrewd move. I would have done the same in your shoes. Though I suppose it was your boss who made the final call.”

“We knew what his decision would be when we provided the intel about your base.”

“You realize we’ll have to strike back?”

“That is expected,” Tseng confirmed.

Rufus stared at him and knocked back more of his drink. Tseng sipped his more slowly - he didn’t often drink and so his tolerance was quite low. It was also cheap whiskey and he didn’t care for the taste of it - he supposed this was why Rufus was drinking his so quickly, to get it over with.

“What would your boss think if he knew about this?”

Tseng snorted. “What would yours?”

Rufus pushed his tongue against his cheek and frowned at him. “That’s toeing the line.”

“Isn’t this whole conversation?” Tseng cocked his head. “To answer your question, my boss doesn’t think about what I’m doing beyond whether or not it nets him results. It’s not a method I’ve ever employed, but my subordinates have certainly stooped to this level to get information. Any means necessary.”

“Would someone really be stupid enough to exchange information for sex?” Rufus scoffed.

“Many people offer. Given what you know the Turks to be capable of, wouldn’t you?”

“No,” Rufus replied flatly. “You’re pretty, Tseng, but you’re not that pretty.”

“The point being,” Tseng ignored him. “Even if my superiors did find out about this, which they won’t, I could easily write it off as utilizing all of my assets to ply a target for information. But neither of us is stupid enough to give the other what we _really_ want, are we?”

“I have plenty of ways of getting information from Shinra,” Rufus laughed. “What I really want from you is your cock, and I seem to be getting that on a pretty regular basis these days.”

Tseng said nothing in response to this. He sipped his drink and set it down on the table next to the chair. Rufus had seen his fair share of fights, the evidence of that was plain in the scars that covered his body, but Tseng doubted he really knew the full extent of what a Turk was capable of - of what Tseng was capable of. Rufus could be dangerous, but Tseng was certain he knew exactly _how_ dangerous. Rufus had no idea how dangerous Tseng could be.

“I suppose Veld protected you from any repercussions while he was in charge of the Turks,” Tseng said after a moment.

Rufus shrugged. “I guess. We just didn’t cross paths with the Turks while he was running things. I had a few close calls with some SOLDIERS, but-”

“SOLDIERS aren’t capable of anything beyond brute force and you’re too smart for that.”

“Thanks for the compliment,” he laughed and knocked back the rest of his drink.

“Do you understand what a Turk is capable of?” Tseng asked.

Rufus looked up and held his gaze. “I know what it is you do, yes.”

“That isn’t what I asked.”

With a coy grin, Rufus scooted back on the bed and draped himself along the length of it. “Why don’t you just show me?”

He thought it was a fun game - and it would be, for now - but a part of Tseng was deadly serious. The idea of prying the nails from Rufus’ fingers or holding him down while his colleagues water boarded him made Tseng’s stomach turn, but at the end of the day, if the President ever asked it of him, refusal would not be an option. Turks who outlived their usefulness left Shinra Tower in a tidy black bag.

For several seconds, he simply stared at Rufus. He _was_ spectacular to look at, so Tseng took his mind away from what might be and focused on what was.

“You should be careful what you ask of me,” he warned.

Rufus ran his hand down his chest and between his legs. “I know what I want.”

Tseng finally stood, embarrassed that the little amount of alcohol he’d had made him feel slightly flushed as he did so. He walked over to the bed and sat down next to Rufus, tracing his hands across his chest before reaching for the bottle of lube on the nightstand.

“I want you on your hands and knees,” Tseng said.

Rufus obliged all too readily, bracing himself on his elbows and arching his back dramatically. Tseng ran his hand down the length of Rufus’ back, squeezing as he cupped Rufus’ ass. He leaned over him and kissed his shoulders and his neck and Rufus arched his neck to try and meet his mouth, but Tseng refused him.

“You asked me to show you what a Turk is capable of,” Tseng whispered. “And that’s what you’ll get.”

He was pleased with how Rufus’ body reacted to the implication.

Popping the cap, Tseng squeezed a little lube into his hand and reached around Rufus’ hip to grip his cock at the base. He wasn’t fully hard yet, but after a few strokes, he rose to the occasion, moaning softly and rocking his hips backward. Tseng let go of him long enough to apply some lube to the fingers of his other hand, which he slid inside of Rufus without much warning before gripping his cock again.

He worked his fingers in and out of Rufus while his other hand pumped up and down the length of him and, as usual, Rufus began to make all manner of noises, groaning from deep within his throat, gasping Tseng’s name, begging for more.

“Gods, don’t stop,” he gasped. “Oh fuck! _Fuck_!”

Tseng said nothing, watching Rufus’ face contort every time his fingers found the sensitive spot inside of him. His moaning was rapidly sending all the blood flow between Tseng’s legs, his heartbeat throbbing in his cock, but it didn’t sway him from his course. He watched the way Rufus’ chest heaved with his gasps, the way his fingers curled around the bedsheets.

“Are you close?” He whispered.

“So close…Gods… _don’t stop_.”

Tseng continued just a little longer and when it seemed like Rufus was right at the verge of coming apart, he stilled his movements and held Rufus’ cock as tightly as he dared. A rush of air left Rufus’ lungs and he turned his head sharply to glare at Tseng.

“I was about to cum,” he hissed.

“I’m aware.”

“Why did you stop?” There was an almost panicked note to his voice.

Tseng shrugged. “This is what you asked for.”

Rufus pressed his face against the bed. “I changed my mind.”

“It’s too late for that.”

Rufus tried to roll his hips to thrust into Tseng’s hand and Tseng released him entirely.

“ _Tseng_ ,” Rufus whined.

“You’ll have to ask nicely,” Tseng said.

Rufus huffed. “So that’s what you want? You want me to beg?”

“Among other things,” Tseng stared at him. He had considered this moment several times in the last few months. He liked the noises Rufus made and he especially liked the idea of hearing Rufus beg for him.

“Fine. _Please_ let me finish.”

Tseng leaned forward and pressed his mouth against Rufus’ ear. “I don’t care for your tone,” he whispered.

“ _Tseng_.” Rufus repeated, more firmly.

“Tell me what you want.”

“I want you to let me finish.”

“You can finish on your own if you’d like,” Tseng said, brushing his nose against Rufus’ neck.

Rufus made an irritated sound in the back of his throat. The situation was made all the better by the fact that he clearly didn’t enjoy being made to beg.

“ _Please_ ,” he groaned.

Tseng brought his hands back against Rufus and resumed, careful yet again to watch him. It took far less time for him to get close and again he stilled his hand, which drew a _growl_ from Rufus’ mouth.

“ _Shiva’s tits, Tseng_ ,” he gasped. “Would you just fucking let me cum?”

“Is this bothering you?” Tseng asked, doing his best to sound bored, though at this point his cock was throbbing painfully between his legs.

“Obviously.” Rufus rocked his hips. “Please. Fuck, Tseng. _Please_!” The last word left his mouth in a whimpering moan. Tseng let go of him and Rufus groaned and buried his face against the bed again. “You’ve made your point,” his voice was muffled against the bed. “I’m so fucking close, Tseng, please.”

Tseng squeezed some lube into his hand and stroked himself while Rufus lay with his face pressed against the bed begging him to finish.

“Fine, okay? I’m literally _begging_ you,” he lifted his head up while Tseng was positioning himself behind him. “Please for the love of all that’s holy-”

Tseng gripped his hips and sank inside of him with a groan. A startled gasp left Rufus’ throat and Tseng barely managed one pump of his hips before Rufus craned his neck back and curled his fingers around the sheets until his knuckles went white, a long, low moan leaving his throat as he finally came. Tseng continued to thrust against him until Rufus reached languidly to smack at him.

“Too much,” he gasped. “Too much.”

Tseng released him and he fell boneless against the mattress gasping for breath. There wasn’t much to be done for it, Tseng had done this to himself - and frankly the noises he’d pulled from Rufus felt worth it - so he lay alongside Rufus and stroked himself while Rufus stared at him with heavy eyelids.

“That was so good,” he sighed.

“I’m glad you enjoyed it.”

“Here,” Rufus sat up slightly, “Let me.” He pulled himself between Tseng’s legs and kissed the very inside of his thigh, nipping the tender skin with the blunt of his teeth as he looked up and held Tseng’s gaze, his hand wrapping around the base of Tseng’s cock and pumping slowly up and down the length of it.

Tseng let his eyelids flutter shut, but they snapped back open as Rufus nipped at his skin again. “No,” he breathed against Tseng’s legs. “Look at me.”

So Tseng did, holding his gaze as the pleasure mounted steadily between his thighs. Rufus had beautiful eyes - a blue so pale they were almost grey - and the intensity of his gaze was always slightly unsettling, but also titillating. Tseng brushed his hand through Rufus’ hair and gripped some of it tightly between his fingers. He held his gaze until the moment his orgasm hit and then he had no control over the way his eyes squeezed shut as he shuddered beneath Rufus’ touch.

Rufus planted one more kiss against the inside of his thigh - toeing the line with the rules once more - and then sat up and moved aside.

“That was fun,” he said. “But now I really do have to go. They’ll be expecting me.”

He slid off the bed and walked away to the bathroom to clean himself. Tseng lay contentedly against the headboard - he was in no rush now. He had nowhere to be and he didn’t particularly care where Rufus was going - they would catch up to each other again eventually.

“Let’s agree on something,” Rufus said, stepping out of the bathroom and grabbing his clothes from the floor.

“What’s that?” Tseng asked. He was exhausted now and his eyelids felt heavy.

“From now on, unless it’s a secure location, I’ll just tell you where I am.” Rufus frowned at the busted buttons on his shirt as he pulled it back on. “How am I supposed to explain this to the others?”

Tseng smirked. “I’m sure you’ll think of something.” He brought the conversation back to Rufus’ first statement. “Why tell me where you are?”

“Let’s just cut the bullshit.” He shrugged. “It’s a waste of your time trying to find me and mine wondering when and where you’re going to show up. I’ll just send you an encrypted message, you can do whatever it is you want to do before we meet up, we can enjoy ourselves, and you can go on your way.”

“And if it is a secure location?”

“If you’re able to track me somewhere I don’t want you then I guess you’ll find out.” He quirked an eyebrow.

Tseng held his hands out. “It makes no difference to me. If you’d rather we not waste our time pretending, then feel free to send me a message with your location. But be careful. One day I won’t owe you anymore and then I can’t promise I’ll be the only one who shows up to greet you.”

“I get your meaning,” Rufus answered dryly. He finished pulling on his clothes. “I’m sure I’ll be seeing you around.”

Once he was gone, Tseng considered getting up and returning to the helicopter a few miles south of town, but instead, he let himself slump lower in the bed and close his eyes. After all, when was the next time he’d have a moment of peace like this?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this was a fun chapter to write and also these boys are very stupid and don't realize how deep they're in already :) 
> 
> thanks for reading!


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